The AGORA High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project
Abstract
We introduce the AGORA project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the LCDM 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 8 galaxies with halo masses M_vir ~= 1e10, 1e11, 1e12, and 1e13 Msun 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 will 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 proof-of-concept dark matter-only test of the formation of a galactic halo with a z=0 mass of M_vir ~= 1.7e11 Msun by 9 different versions of the participating codes is also presented to validate the infrastructure of the project.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1308.2669,
title = {The AGORA High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project},
author = {Ji-hoon Kim and Tom Abel and Oscar Agertz and Greg L. Bryan and Daniel Ceverino and Charlotte Christensen and Charlie Conroy and Avishai Dekel and Nickolay Y. Gnedin and Nathan J. Goldbaum and Javiera Guedes and Oliver Hahn and Alexander Hobbs and Philip F. Hopkins and Cameron B. Hummels and Francesca Iannuzzi and Dusan Keres and Anatoly Klypin and Andrey V. Kravtsov and Mark R. Krumholz and Michael Kuhlen and Samuel N. Leitner and Piero Madau and Lucio Mayer and Christopher E. Moody and Kentaro Nagamine and Michael L. Norman and Jose Oñorbe and Brian W. O'Shea and Annalisa Pillepich and Joel R. Primack and Thomas Quinn and Justin I. Read and Brant E. Robertson and Miguel Rocha and Douglas H. Rudd and Sijing Shen and Britton D. Smith and Alexander S. Szalay and Romain Teyssier and Robert Thompson and Keita Todoroki and Matthew J. Turk and James W. Wadsley and John H. Wise and Adi Zolotov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1308.2669},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
21 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement, Image resolution greatly reduced, High-resolution version of this article and more information about the AGORA Project including the science goals of the 13 Working Groups are available at http://www.AGORAsimulations.org/ and at http://sites.google.com/site/santacruzcomparisonproject/details/