High Angular Momentum Halo Gas: A Feedback and Code-independent Prediction of LCDM
Abstract
We investigate angular momentum acquisition in Milky Way-sized galaxies by comparing five high resolution zoom-in simulations, each implementing identical cosmological initial conditions but utilizing different hydrodynamic codes: Enzo, Art, Ramses, Arepo, and Gizmo-PSPH. Each code implements a distinct set of feedback and star formation prescriptions. We find that while many galaxy and halo properties vary between the different codes (and feedback prescriptions), there is qualitative agreement on the process of angular momentum acquisition in the galaxy's halo. In all simulations, cold filamentary gas accretion to the halo results in ~4 times more specific angular momentum in cold halo gas (λ_(cold) ≳ 0.1) than in the dark matter halo. At z > 1, this inflow takes the form of inspiraling cold streams that are co-directional in the halo of the galaxy and are fueled, aligned, and kinematically connected to filamentary gas infall along the cosmic web. Due to the qualitative agreement among disparate simulations, we conclude that the buildup of high angular momentum halo gas and the presence of these inspiraling cold streams are robust predictions of Lambda Cold Dark Matter galaxy formation, though the detailed morphology of these streams is significantly less certain. A growing body of observational evidence suggests that this process is borne out in the real universe.
Additional Information
© 2017 American Astronomical Society. Received 2016 June 27. Accepted 2017 April 17. Published 2017 June 30. Computations described in this work were performed using the publicly available Enzo code (http://enzo-project.org), and the publicly available yt toolkit (http://yt-project.org/), both of which are the products of collaborative efforts of many independent scientists from numerous institutions around the world. Their commitment to open science has helped make this work possible. K.R.S. would especially like to thank Matt Turk and Nathan Goldbaum for their support with yt. K.R.S. also thanks Volker Springel, Lars Hernquist, and Paul Torrey for running the Arepo simulation discussed in this work, for allowing us to include its results as part of this comparison project, and for providing useful discussions and comments. K.R.S. was supported by HST-GO-14268.026-A. J.S.B. was supported by HST AR-12836. C.A.F.G. was supported by NSF grants AST-1412836 and AST-1517491, by NASA grant NNX15AB22G, and by STScI grants HST-AR-14293.001-A and HST-GO-14268.022-A. J.D. acknowledges support from the Spin(e) grant ANR-13-BS05-0005 of the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (http://cosmicorigin.org). Support for P.F.H. was provided by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, NASA ATP Grant NNX14AH35G, and NSF Collaborative Research Grant #1411920 and CAREER grant #1455342. The Art run was performed at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. DC acknowledges support from the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) via the ERC Advanced Grant "STARLIGHT: Formation of the First Stars" (project number 339177). The Ramses simulation was performed on the DiRAC Facility, jointly funded by BIS and STFC. J.D.'s research is partly funded by Adrian Beecroft and the Oxford Martin School. The Gizmo-PSPH run was carried out on the CUNY HPC which is supported, in part, under National Science Foundation Grants CNS-0958379, CNS-0855217, and ACI-1126113, and the City University of New York High Performance Computing Center at the College of Staten Island. Storage and analysis of the simulations was performed on the CTP cluster, which is supported by GRTI grant CT04AGR15001 and the Physics Division of the U.S. Army Research Office grant #64775-PH-REP.Attached Files
Published - Stewart_2017_ApJ_843_47.pdf
Submitted - 1606.08542.pdf
Files
| Name | Size | Download all |
|---|---|---|
|
md5:75e5663f7d25556433199a88e922a8cd
|
3.6 MB | Preview Download |
|
md5:9a8f54a3614b853ecc8e475164cf8789
|
15.2 MB | Preview Download |
Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 78826
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170707-070944289
- HST-GO-14268.026-A
- NASA
- HST-AR-12836
- NASA
- AST-1412836
- NSF
- AST-1517491
- NSF
- NNX15AB22G
- NASA
- HST-AR-14293.001-A
- NASA
- HST-GO-14268.022-A
- NASA
- ANR-13-BS05-0005
- Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR)
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- NNX14AH35G
- NASA
- AST-1411920
- NSF
- AST-1455342
- NSF
- 339177
- European Research Council (ERC)
- Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- Oxford Martin School
- CNS-0958379
- NSF
- CNS-0855217
- NSF
- ACI-1126113
- NSF
- CT04AGR15001
- Georgia Tech Research Institute
- 64775-PH-REP
- Army Research Office (ARO)
- Created
-
2017-07-07Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department