Adaptive mesh refinement simulations of galaxy formation: Exploring numerical and physical parameters

Abstract

We carry out adaptive mesh refinement cosmological simulations of Milky Way mass halos in order to investigate the formation of disk-like galaxies in a Λ-dominated cold dark matter model. We evolve a suite of five halos to z = 0 and find a gas disk formation in each; however, in agreement with previous smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations (that did not include a subgrid feedback model), the rotation curves of all halos are centrally peaked due to a massive spheroidal component. Our standard model includes radiative cooling and star formation, but no feedback. We further investigate this angular momentum problem by systematically modifying various simulation parameters including: (1) spatial resolution, ranging from 1700 to 212 pc; (2) an additional pressure component to ensure that the Jeans length is always resolved; (3) low star formation efficiency, going down to 0.1%; (4) fixed physical resolution as opposed to comoving resolution; (5) a supernova feedback model that injects thermal energy to the local cell; and (6) a subgrid feedback model which suppresses cooling in the immediate vicinity of a star formation event. Of all of these, we find that only the last (cooling suppression) has any impact on the massive spheroidal component. In particular, a simulation with cooling suppression and feedback results in a rotation curve that, while still peaked, is considerably reduced from our standard runs. © © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..