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The AGORA high-resolution galaxy simulations comparison project

Kim, Ji Hoon ; Abel, Tom ; Agertz, Oscar LU ; Bryan, Greg L. ; Ceverino, Daniel ; Christensen, Charlotte ; Conroy, Charlie ; Dekel, Avishai ; Gnedin, Nickolay Y. and Goldbaum, Nathan J. , et al. (2014) In Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series 210(1).
Abstract

We introduce the Assembling Galaxies Of Resolved Anatomy (AGORA) project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the ΛCDM cosmology. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with force resolutions of 100 proper pc or better will be run with a variety of code platforms to follow the hierarchical growth, star formation history, morphological transformation, and the cycle of baryons in and out of eight galaxies with halo masses M vir ≃ 1010, 1011, 1012, and 1013 M at z = 0 and two different ("violent" and "quiescent") assembly histories. The numerical techniques and implementations used in this project include the smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes GADGET and GASOLINE,... (More)

We introduce the Assembling Galaxies Of Resolved Anatomy (AGORA) project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the ΛCDM cosmology. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with force resolutions of 100 proper pc or better will be run with a variety of code platforms to follow the hierarchical growth, star formation history, morphological transformation, and the cycle of baryons in and out of eight galaxies with halo masses M vir ≃ 1010, 1011, 1012, and 1013 M at z = 0 and two different ("violent" and "quiescent") assembly histories. The numerical techniques and implementations used in this project include the smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes GADGET and GASOLINE, and the adaptive mesh refinement codes ART, ENZO, and RAMSES. The codes share common initial conditions and common astrophysics packages including UV background, metal-dependent radiative cooling, metal and energy yields of supernovae, and stellar initial mass function. These are described in detail in the present paper. Subgrid star formation and feedback prescriptions will be tuned to provide a realistic interstellar and circumgalactic medium using a non-cosmological disk galaxy simulation. Cosmological runs will be systematically compared with each other using a common analysis toolkit and validated against observations to verify that the solutions are robust - i.e., that the astrophysical assumptions are responsible for any success, rather than artifacts of particular implementations. The goals of the AGORA project are, broadly speaking, to raise the realism and predictive power of galaxy simulations and the understanding of the feedback processes that regulate galaxy "metabolism." The initial conditions for the AGORA galaxies as well as simulation outputs at various epochs will be made publicly available to the community. The proof-of-concept dark-matter-only test of the formation of a galactic halo with a z = 0 mass of M vir ≃ 1.7 × 1011 M by nine different versions of the participating codes is also presented to validate the infrastructure of the project.

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publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
keywords
cosmology: theory, dark matter, galaxies: evolution, galaxies: formation, hydrodynamics, methods: numerical
in
Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series
volume
210
issue
1
article number
14
publisher
IOP Publishing
external identifiers
  • scopus:84893172908
ISSN
0067-0049
DOI
10.1088/0067-0049/210/1/14
language
English
LU publication?
no
id
6c782eb3-879c-421d-a976-5f1dc465b0bb
date added to LUP
2019-02-07 11:19:30
date last changed
2022-04-25 21:21:10
@article{6c782eb3-879c-421d-a976-5f1dc465b0bb,
  abstract     = {{<p>We introduce the Assembling Galaxies Of Resolved Anatomy (AGORA) project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the ΛCDM cosmology. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with force resolutions of 100 proper pc or better will be run with a variety of code platforms to follow the hierarchical growth, star formation history, morphological transformation, and the cycle of baryons in and out of eight galaxies with halo masses M vir ≃ 10<sup>10</sup>, 10<sup>11</sup>, 10<sup>12</sup>, and 10<sup>13</sup> M at z = 0 and two different ("violent" and "quiescent") assembly histories. The numerical techniques and implementations used in this project include the smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes GADGET and GASOLINE, and the adaptive mesh refinement codes ART, ENZO, and RAMSES. The codes share common initial conditions and common astrophysics packages including UV background, metal-dependent radiative cooling, metal and energy yields of supernovae, and stellar initial mass function. These are described in detail in the present paper. Subgrid star formation and feedback prescriptions will be tuned to provide a realistic interstellar and circumgalactic medium using a non-cosmological disk galaxy simulation. Cosmological runs will be systematically compared with each other using a common analysis toolkit and validated against observations to verify that the solutions are robust - i.e., that the astrophysical assumptions are responsible for any success, rather than artifacts of particular implementations. The goals of the AGORA project are, broadly speaking, to raise the realism and predictive power of galaxy simulations and the understanding of the feedback processes that regulate galaxy "metabolism." The initial conditions for the AGORA galaxies as well as simulation outputs at various epochs will be made publicly available to the community. The proof-of-concept dark-matter-only test of the formation of a galactic halo with a z = 0 mass of M vir ≃ 1.7 × 10<sup>11</sup> M by nine different versions of the participating codes is also presented to validate the infrastructure of the project.</p>}},
  author       = {{Kim, Ji Hoon and Abel, Tom and Agertz, Oscar and Bryan, Greg L. and Ceverino, Daniel and Christensen, Charlotte and Conroy, Charlie and Dekel, Avishai and Gnedin, Nickolay Y. and Goldbaum, Nathan J. and Guedes, Javiera and Hahn, Oliver and Hobbs, Alexander and Hopkins, Philip F. and Hummels, Cameron B. and Iannuzzi, Francesca and Keres, Dusan and Klypin, Anatoly and Kravtsov, Andrey V. and Krumholz, Mark R. and Kuhlen, Michael and Leitner, Samuel N. and Madau, Piero and Mayer, Lucio and Moody, Christopher E. and Nagamine, Kentaro and Norman, Michael L. and Onorbe, Jose and O'Shea, Brian W. and Pillepich, Annalisa and Primack, Joel R. and Quinn, Thomas and Read, Justin I. and Robertson, Brant E. and Rocha, Miguel and Rudd, Douglas H. and Shen, Sijing and Smith, Britton D. and Szalay, Alexander S. and Teyssier, Romain and Thompson, Robert and Todoroki, Keita and Turk, Matthew J. and Wadsley, James W. and Wise, John H. and Zolotov, Adi}},
  issn         = {{0067-0049}},
  keywords     = {{cosmology: theory; dark matter; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: formation; hydrodynamics; methods: numerical}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{01}},
  number       = {{1}},
  publisher    = {{IOP Publishing}},
  series       = {{Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series}},
  title        = {{The AGORA high-resolution galaxy simulations comparison project}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/210/1/14}},
  doi          = {{10.1088/0067-0049/210/1/14}},
  volume       = {{210}},
  year         = {{2014}},
}