English

FIRE-3: Updated Stellar Evolution Models, Yields, & Microphysics and Fitting Functions for Applications in Galaxy Simulations

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2022-12-14 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

Increasingly, uncertainties in predictions from galaxy formation simulations (at sub-Milky Way masses) are dominated by uncertainties in stellar evolution inputs. In this paper, we present the full set of updates from the FIRE-2 version of the Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE) project code, to the next version, FIRE-3. While the transition from FIRE-1 to FIRE-2 focused on improving numerical methods, here we update the stellar evolution tracks used to determine stellar feedback inputs, e.g. stellar mass-loss (O/B and AGB), spectra (luminosities and ionization rates), and supernova rates (core-collapse and Ia), as well as detailed mass-dependent yields. We also update the low-temperature cooling and chemistry, to enable improved accuracy at T104T \lesssim 10^{4}\,K and densities n1cm3n\gg 1\,{\rm cm^{-3}}, and the meta-galactic ionizing background. All of these synthesize newer empirical constraints on these quantities and updated stellar evolution and yield models from a number of groups, addressing different aspects of stellar evolution. To make the updated models as accessible as possible, we provide fitting functions for all of the relevant updated tracks, yields, etc, in a form specifically designed so they can be directly 'plugged in' to existing galaxy formation simulations. We also summarize the default FIRE-3 implementations of 'optional' physics, including spectrally-resolved cosmic rays and supermassive black hole growth and feedback.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2203.00040,
  title  = {FIRE-3: Updated Stellar Evolution Models, Yields, & Microphysics and Fitting Functions for Applications in Galaxy Simulations},
  author = {Philip F. Hopkins and Andrew Wetzel and Coral Wheeler and Robyn Sanderson and Michael Y. Grudic and Omid Sameie and Michael Boylan-Kolchin and Matthew Orr and Xiangcheng Ma and Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere and Dusan Keres and Eliot Quataert and Kung-Yi Su and Jorge Moreno and Robert Feldmann and James S. Bullock and Sarah R. Loebman and Daniel Angles-Alcazar and Jonathan Stern and Lina Necib and Christopher C. Hayward},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.00040},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

26 pages, 12 figures. Submitted to MNRAS. Comments welcome

R2 v1 2026-06-24T09:56:56.307Z