1,721,403 research outputs found
The formation of disc galaxies in high-resolution moving-mesh cosmological simulations
No full textWe present cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of eight Milky Way-sized haloes that have been previously studied with dark matter only in the Aquarius project. For the first time, we employ the moving-mesh code arepo in zoom simulations combined with a comprehensive model for galaxy formation physics designed for large cosmological simulations. Our simulations form in most of the eight haloes strongly disc-dominated systems with realistic rotation curves, close to exponential surface density profiles, a stellar mass to halo mass ratio that matches expectations from abundance matching techniques, and galaxy sizes and ages consistent with expectations from large galaxy surveys in the local Universe. There is no evidence for any dark matter core formation in our simulations, even so they include repeated baryonic outflows by supernova-driven winds and black hole quasar feedback. For one of our haloes, the object studied in the recent ‘Aquila’ code comparison project, we carried out a resolution study with our techniques, covering a dynamic range of 64 in mass resolution. Without any change in our feedback parameters, the final galaxy properties are reassuringly similar, in contrast to other modelling techniques used in the field that are inherently resolution dependent. This success in producing realistic disc galaxies is reached, in the context of our interstellar medium treatment, without resorting to a high density threshold for star formation, a low star formation efficiency, or early stellar feedback, factors deemed crucial for disc formation by other recent numerical studies
Magnetic Fields in Cosmological Simulations of Disk Galaxies
No full textObservationally, magnetic fields reach equipartition with thermal energy and cosmic rays in the interstellar medium of disk galaxies such as the Milky Way. However, thus far cosmological simulations of the formation and evolution of galaxies have usually neglected magnetic fields. We employ the moving-mesh code AREPO to follow for the first time the formation and evolution of a Milky Way-like disk galaxy in its full cosmological context while taking into account magnetic fields. We find that a prescribed tiny magnetic seed field grows exponentially by a small-scale dynamo until it saturates around z = 4 with a magnetic energy of about 10% of the kinetic energy in the center of the galaxy's main progenitor halo. By z = 2, a well-defined gaseous disk forms in which the magnetic field is further amplified by differential rotation, until it saturates at an average field strength of ~6 μG in the disk plane. In this phase, the magnetic field is transformed from a chaotic small-scale field to an ordered large-scale field coherent on scales comparable to the disk radius. The final magnetic field strength, its radial profile, and the stellar structure of the disk compare well with observational data. A minor merger temporarily increases the magnetic field strength by about a factor of two, before it quickly decays back to its saturation value. Our results are highly insensitive to the initial seed field strength and suggest that the large-scale magnetic field in spiral galaxies can be explained as a result of the cosmic structure formation process
Accurately simulating anisotropic thermal conduction on a moving mesh
No full textWe present a novel implementation of an extremum preserving anisotropic diffusion solver for thermal conduction on the unstructured moving Voronoi mesh of the Arepo code. The method relies on splitting the one-sided facet fluxes into normal and oblique components, with the oblique fluxes being limited such that the total flux is both locally conservative and extremum preserving. The approach makes use of harmonic averaging points and a simple, robust interpolation scheme that works well for strong heterogeneous and anisotropic diffusion problems. Moreover, the required discretization stencil is small. Efficient fully implicit and semi-implicit time integration schemes are also implemented. We perform several numerical tests that evaluate the stability and accuracy of the scheme, including applications such as point explosions with heat conduction and calculations of convective instabilities in conducting plasmas. The new implementation is suitable for studying important astrophysical phenomena, such as the conductive heat transport in galaxy clusters, the evolution of supernova remnants, or the distribution of heat from black hole-driven jets into the intracluster medium
The large-scale properties of simulated cosmological magnetic fields
No full textWe perform uniformly sampled large-scale cosmological simulations including magnetic fields with the moving mesh code arepo. We run two sets of MHD simulations: one including adiabatic gas physics only; the other featuring the fiducial feedback model of the Illustris simulation. In the adiabatic case, the magnetic field amplification follows the B ∝ ρ2/3 scaling derived from ‘flux-freezing' arguments, with the seed field strength providing an overall normalization factor. At high baryon overdensities the amplification is enhanced by shear flows and turbulence. Feedback physics and the inclusion of radiative cooling change this picture dramatically. In haloes, gas collapses to much larger densities and the magnetic field is amplified strongly and to the same maximum intensity irrespective of the initial seed field of which any memory is lost. At lower densities a dependence on the seed field strength and orientation, which in principle can be used to constrain models of cosmic magnetogenesis, is still present. Inside the most massive haloes magnetic fields reach values of ∼ 10-100 μG, in agreement with galaxy cluster observations. The topology of the field is tangled and gives rise to rotation measure signals in reasonable agreement with the observations. However, the rotation measure signal declines too rapidly towards larger radii as compared to observational data
Diffuse gas properties and stellar metallicities in cosmological simulations of disc galaxy formation
No full textWe analyse the properties of the circumgalactic medium and the metal content of the stars comprising the central galaxy in eight hydrodynamical ‘zoom-in’ simulations of disc galaxy formation. We use these properties as a benchmark for our model of galaxy formation physics implemented in the moving-mesh code arepo, which succeeds in forming quite realistic late-type spirals in the set of ‘Aquarius’ initial conditions of Milky-Way-sized haloes. Galactic winds significantly influence the morphology of the circumgalactic medium and induce bipolar features in the distribution of heavy elements. They also affect the thermodynamic properties of the circumgalactic gas by supplying an energy input that sustains its radiative losses. Although a significant fraction of the heavy elements are transferred from the central galaxy to the halo, and even beyond the virial radius, enough metals are retained by stars to yield a peak in their metallicity distributions at about Z⊙. All our default runs overestimate the stellar [O/Fe] ratio, an effect that we demonstrate can be rectified by an increase of the adopted Type Ia supernova rate. Nevertheless, the models have difficulty in producing stellar metallicity gradients of the same strength as observed in the Milky Way
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics on a moving mesh
Full text linkIn certain astrophysical systems, the commonly employed ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) approximation breaks down. Here, we introduce novel explicit and implicit numerical schemes of ohmic resistivity terms in the moving-mesh code arepo. We include these non-ideal terms for two MHD techniques: the Powell 8-wave formalism and a constrained transport scheme, which evolves the cell-centred magnetic vector potential. We test our implementation against problems of increasing complexity, such as one- and two-dimensional diffusion problems, and the evolution of progressive and stationary Alfvén waves. On these test problems, our implementation recovers the analytic solutions to second-order accuracy. As first applications, we investigate the tearing instability in magnetized plasmas and the gravitational collapse of a rotating magnetized gas cloud. In both systems, resistivity plays a key role. In the former case, it allows for the development of the tearing instability through reconnection of the magnetic field lines. In the latter, the adopted (constant) value of ohmic resistivity has an impact on both the gas distribution around the emerging protostar and the mass loading of magnetically driven outflows. Our new non-ideal MHD implementation opens up the possibility to study magneto-hydrodynamical systems on a moving mesh beyond the ideal MHD approximation
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