Search

We investigate the contribution of host galaxies to the overall Dispersion Measures (DMs) for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) using the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE-2) cosmological zoom-in simulation suite. We calculate DMs from every star particle in the simulated L* galaxies by ray-tracing through their multi-phase interstellar medium (ISM), summing the line-of-sight free thermal electron column for all gas elements within $\pm$20 kpc of the galactic mid-plane. At $z=0$, we find average (median) host-galaxy DMs of 74 (43) and 210 (94) pc cm$^{-3}$ for older ($\gtrsim$10 Myr) and younger ($\lesssim$10 Myr) stellar populations, respectively. Inclination raises the median DM measured for older populations ($\gtrsim$10 Myr) in the simulations by a factor of $\sim$2, but generally does not affect the younger stars deeply embedded in H{\small II} regions except in extreme edge-on cases (inclination $\gtrsim 85^\circ$). In kinematically disturbed snapshots ($z = 1$ in FIRE), the average (median) host-galaxy DMs are higher: 80 (107) and 266 (795) pc cm$^{-3}$ for older ($\gtrsim$10 Myr) and younger ($\lesssim$10 Myr) stellar populations, respectively. FIRE galaxies tend to have higher DM values than cosmological simulations such as IllustrisTNG\rev{, with larger tails in their distributions to high DMs}. As a result, FRB host galaxies may be closer (lower redshift) than previously inferred. Furthermore, constraining host-galaxy DM distributions may help significantly constrain FRB progenitor models., Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, accepted to ApJ Letters. Updated with revised, accepted version of manuscript

The cold ($\sim 10^{4}\,{\rm K}$) component of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) accounts for a significant fraction of all galactic baryons. However, using current galaxy-scale simulations to determine the origin and evolution of cold CGM gas poses a significant challenge, since it is computationally infeasible to directly simulate a galactic halo alongside the sub-pc scales that are crucial for understanding the interactions between cold CGM gas and the surrounding ''hot'' medium. In this work, we introduce a new approach: the Cold Gas Subgrid Model (CGSM), which models unresolved cold gas as a second fluid in addition to the standard ''normal'' gas fluid. The CGSM tracks the total mass density and bulk momentum of unresolved cold gas, deriving the properties of its unresolved cloudlets from the resolved gas phase. The interactions between the subgrid cold fluid and the resolved fluid are modeled by prescriptions from high-resolution simulations of ''cloud crushing'' and thermal instability. Through a series of idealized tests, we demonstrate the CGSM's ability to overcome the resolution limitations of traditional hydrodynamics simulations, successfully capturing the correct cold gas mass, its spatial distribution, and the timescales for cloud destruction and growth. We discuss the implications of using this model in cosmological simulations to more accurately represent the microphysics that govern the galactic baryon cycle., Comment: accepted by MNRAS

We present CloudFlex, a new open-source tool for predicting the absorption-line signatures of cool gas in galaxy halos with complex small-scale structure. Motivated by analyses of cool material in hydrodynamical simulations of turbulent, multiphase media, we model individual cool gas structures as assemblies of cloudlets with a power-law distribution of cloudlet mass $\propto m_{\rm cl}^{-\alpha}$ and relative velocities drawn from a turbulent velocity field. The user may specify $\alpha$, the lower limit of the cloudlet mass distribution ($m_{\rm cl,min}$), and several other parameters that set the total mass, size, and velocity distribution of the complex. We then calculate the MgII 2796 absorption profiles induced by the cloudlets along pencil-beam lines of sight. We demonstrate that at fixed metallicity, the covering fraction of sightlines with equivalent widths $W_{2796} < 0.3$ Ang increases significantly with decreasing $m_{\rm cl,min}$, cool cloudlet number density ($n_{\rm cl}$), and cloudlet complex size. We then present a first application, using this framework to predict the projected $W_{2796}$ distribution around ${\sim}L^*$ galaxies. We show that the observed incidences of $W_{2796}>0.3$ Ang sightlines within 10 kpc < $R_{\perp}$ < 50 kpc are consistent with our model over much of parameter space. However, they are underpredicted by models with $m_{\rm cl,min}\ge100M_{\odot}$ and $n_{\rm cl}\ge0.03$ $\rm cm^{-3}$, in keeping with a picture in which the inner cool circumgalactic medium (CGM) is dominated by numerous low-mass cloudlets ($m_{\rm cl}\lesssim100M_{\odot}$) with a volume filling factor ${\lesssim}1\%$. When used to simultaneously model absorption-line datasets built from multi-sightline and/or spatially-extended background probes, CloudFlex will enable detailed constraints on the size and velocity distributions of structures comprising the photoionized CGM., Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to AAS Journals, with minor modifications. Comments welcome. (1) Co-first authors who made equal contributions to this work

Recent theoretical studies predict that the circumgalactic medium (CGM) around low-redshift, $\sim L_*$ galaxies could have substantial nonthermal pressure support in the form of cosmic rays. However, these predictions are sensitive to the specific model of cosmic-ray transport employed, which is theoretically and observationally underconstrained. In this work, we propose a novel observational constraint for calculating the lower limit of the radially-averaged, effective cosmic-ray transport rate, $\kappa_{\rm min}^{\rm eff}$. Under a wide range of assumptions (so long as cosmic rays do not lose a significant fraction of their energy in the galactic disk, regardless of whether the cosmic-ray pressure is important or not in the CGM), we demonstrate a well-defined relationship between $\kappa_{\rm min}^{\rm eff}$ and three observable galaxy properties: the total hydrogen column density, the average star formation rate, and the gas circular velocity. We use a suite of FIRE-2 galaxy simulations with a variety of cosmic-ray transport physics to demonstrate that our analytic model of $\kappa_{\rm min}^{\rm eff}$ is a robust lower limit of the true cosmic-ray transport rate. We then apply our new model to calculate $\kappa_{\rm min}^{\rm eff}$ for galaxies in the COS-Halos sample, and confirm this already reveals strong evidence for an effective transport rate which rises rapidly away from the interstellar medium to values $\kappa_{\rm min}^{\rm eff}\gtrsim 10^{30-31}\,{\rm cm}^2\,{\rm s}^{-1}$ (corresponding to anisotropic streaming velocities of $v^{\rm stream}_{\rm eff} \gtrsim 1000\,{\rm km}\,{\rm s}^{-1}$) in the diffuse CGM, at impact parameters larger than $50-100$\,kpc. We discuss how future observations can provide qualitatively new constraints in our understanding of cosmic rays in the CGM and intergalactic medium., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, accepted to MNRAS

The standard cold dark matter plus cosmological constant model predicts that galaxies form within dark-matter haloes, and that low-mass galaxies are more dark-matter dominated than massive ones. The unexpected discovery of two low-mass galaxies lacking dark matter immediately provoked concerns about the standard cosmology and ignited explorations of alternatives, including self-interacting dark matter and modified gravity. Apprehension grew after several cosmological simulations using the conventional model failed to form adequate numerical analogues with comparable internal characteristics (stellar masses, sizes, velocity dispersions and morphologies). Here we show that the standard paradigm naturally produces galaxies lacking dark matter with internal characteristics in agreement with observations. Using a state-of-the-art cosmological simulation and a meticulous galaxy-identification technique, we find that extreme close encounters with massive neighbours can be responsible for this. We predict that approximately 30 percent of massive central galaxies (with at least 1e11 solar masses in stars) harbour at least one dark-matter-deficient satellite (with 1e8 - 1e9 solar masses in stars). This distinctive class of galaxies provides an additional layer in our understanding of the role of interactions in shaping galactic properties. Future observations surveying galaxies in the aforementioned regime will provide a crucial test of this scenario., Comment: 55 pages, 4 figures, 13 supplementary figures. 29 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy. To appear on 14-February-2022. Published version: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-021-01598-4

The thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect is a powerful tool with the potential for constraining directly the properties of the hot gas that dominates dark matter halos because it measures pressure and thus thermal energy density. Studying this hot component of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) is important because it is strongly impacted by star-formation and active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity in galaxies, participating in the feedback loop that regulates star and black hole mass growth in galaxies. We study the tSZ effect across a wide halo mass range using three cosmological hydrodynamical simulations: Illustris-TNG, EAGLE, and FIRE-2. Specifically, we present the scaling relation between tSZ signal and halo mass and radial profiles of gas density, temperature, and pressure for all three simulations. The analysis includes comparisons to Planck tSZ observations and to the thermal pressure profile inferred from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) measurements. We compare these tSZ data to the simulations to interpret the measurements in terms of feedback and accretion processes in the CGM. We also identify as-yet unobserved potential signatures of these processes that may be visible in future measurements, which will have the capability of measuring tSZ signals to even lower masses. We also perform internal comparisons between runs with different physical assumptions. We conclude: (1) there is strong evidence for the impact of feedback at $R_{500}$ but that this impact decreases by $5R_{500}$, and (2) the thermodynamic profiles of the CGM are highly dependent on the implemented model, such as cosmic-ray or AGN feedback prescriptions., Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures, submitted to ApJ, comments welcome

We use hydrodynamical simulations of two Milky Way-mass galaxies to demonstrate the impact of cosmic-ray pressure on the kinematics of cool and warm circumgalactic gas. Consistent with previous studies, we find that cosmic-ray pressure can dominate over thermal pressure in the inner 50 kpc of the circumgalactic medium (CGM), creating an overall cooler CGM than that of similar galaxy simulations run without cosmic rays. We generate synthetic sightlines of the simulated galaxies' CGM and use Voigt profile fitting methods to extract ion column densities, Doppler-b parameters, and velocity centroids of individual absorbers. We directly compare these synthetic spectral line fits with HST/COS CGM absorption-line data analyses, which tend to show that metallic species with a wide range of ionization potential energies are often kinematically aligned. Compared to the Milky-Way simulation run without cosmic rays, the presence of cosmic-ray pressure in the inner CGM creates narrower OVI absorption features and broader SiIII absorption features, a quality which is more consistent with observational data. Additionally, because the cool gas is buoyant due to nonthermal cosmic-ray pressure support, the velocity centroids of both cool and warm gas tend to align in the simulated Milky Way with feedback from cosmic rays. Our study demonstrates that detailed, direct comparisons between simulations and observations, focused on gas kinematics, have the potential to reveal the dominant physical mechanisms that shape the CGM., Comment: 26 pages including 19 figures and appendix. Accepted by ApJ. Updated version includes additional figures, tests, and expanded discussion. Supplemental figures at irynabutsky.me/data

We present a suite of high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations to $z=4$ of a $10^{12}\,{\rm M}_{\odot}$ halo at $z=0$, obtained using seven contemporary astrophysical simulation codes widely used in the numerical galaxy formation community. Physics prescriptions for gas cooling, heating, and star formation, are similar to the ones used in our previous {\it AGORA} disk comparison but now account for the effects of cosmological processes. In this work, we introduce the most careful comparison yet of galaxy formation simulations run by different code groups, together with a series of four calibration steps each of which is designed to reduce the number of tunable simulation parameters adopted in the final run. After all the participating code groups successfully completed the calibration steps, we reach a suite of cosmological simulations with similar mass assembly histories down to $z=4$. With numerical accuracy that resolves the internal structure of a target halo, we find that the codes overall agree well with one another in e.g., gas and stellar properties, but also show differences in e.g., circumgalactic medium properties. We argue that, if adequately tested in accordance with our proposed calibration steps and common parameters, the results of high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations can be robust and reproducible. New code groups are invited to join this comparison by generating equivalent models by adopting the common initial conditions, the common easy-to-implement physics package, and the proposed calibration steps. Further analyses of the simulations presented here will be in forthcoming reports from our Collaboration., Comment: Accepted for publication to the ApJ. The simulation snapshots used in this paper will be made publicly available in a user-friendly interface. The announcement of the data release will be posted on the AGORA Project webpage (www.agorasimulations.org). Early access to the data can be provided upon request to the authors, or to the project coordinator (sroca01@ucm.es, santacruzgalaxy@gmail.com)

We study the impact of cosmic rays (CRs) on the structure of virial shocks, using a large suite of high-resolution cosmological FIRE-2 simulations accounting for CR injection by supernovae. In massive ($M_{\rm halo} \gtrsim 10^{11}\,M_{\odot}$), low-redshift ($z\lesssim 1-2$) halos, which are expected to form "hot halos" with slowly-cooling gas in quasi-hydrostatic equilibrium (with a stable virial shock), our simulations without CRs do exhibit clear virial shocks. The cooler phase condensing out from inflows becomes pressure-confined to over-dense clumps, embedded in low-density, volume-filling hot gas whose cooling time is much longer than inflow time. The gas thus transitions sharply from cool free-falling inflow, to hot and thermal-pressure supported at approximately the virial radius ($\approx R_{\rm vir}$), and the shock is quasi-spherical. With CRs, we previously argued that halos in this particular mass and redshift range build up CR-pressure-dominated gaseous halos. Here, we show that when CR pressure dominates over thermal pressure, there is no significant virial shock. Instead, inflowing gas is gradually decelerated by the CR pressure gradient and the gas is relatively subsonic out to and even beyond $R_\mathrm{vir}$. Rapid cooling also maintains sub-virial temperatures in the inflowing gas within $\sim R_\mathrm{vir}$., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Observations of UV metal absorption lines have provided insight into the structure and composition of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) around galaxies. We compare these observations with the low-redshift ($z \leq 0.3$) CGM around dwarf galaxies in high-resolution cosmological zoom-in runs in the FIRE-2 simulation suite. We select simulated galaxies that match the halo mass, stellar mass, and redshift of the observed samples. We produce absorption measurements using Trident for UV transitions of C IV, O VI, Mg II and Si III. The FIRE equivalent width (EW) distributions and covering fractions for the C IV ion are broadly consistent with observations inside $0.5 R_{vir}$, but are under-predicted for O VI, Mg II, and Si III. The absorption strengths of the ions in the CGM are moderately correlated with the masses and star formation activity of the galaxies. The correlation strengths increase with the ionization potential of the ions. The structure and composition of the gas from the simulations exhibit three zones around dwarf galaxies characterized by distinct ion column densities: the disky ISM, the inner CGM (the wind-dominated regime), and the outer CGM (the IGM accretion-dominated regime). We find that the outer CGM in the simulations is nearly but not quite supported by thermal pressure, so it is not in hydrostatic equilibrium (HSE), resulting in halo-scale bulk inflow and outflow motions. The net gas inflow rates are comparable to the SFR of the galaxy, but the bulk inflow and outflow rates are greater by an order of magnitude, with velocities comparable to the virial velocity of the halo. These roughly virial velocities (${\sim} 100 km s^{-1}$) produce large EWs in the simulations. This supports a picture for dwarf galaxies in which the dynamics of the CGM at large scales are coupled to the small-scale star formation activity near the centre of their halos., Comment: To appear in MNRAS

Large reservoirs of cold (~ 10^4 K) gas exist out to and beyond the virial radius in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) of all types of galaxies. Photoionization modeling suggests that cold CGM gas has significantly lower densities than expected by theoretical predictions based on thermal pressure equilibrium with hot CGM gas. In this work, we investigate the impact of cosmic ray physics on the formation of cold gas via thermal instability. We use idealized three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations to follow the evolution of thermally unstable gas in a gravitationally stratified medium. We find that cosmic ray pressure lowers the density and increases the size of cold gas clouds formed through thermal instability. We develop a simple model for how the cold cloud sizes and the relative densities of cold and hot gas depend on cosmic ray pressure. Cosmic ray pressure can help counteract gravity to keep cold gas in the CGM for longer, thereby increasing the predicted cold mass fraction and decreasing the predicted cold gas inflow rates. Efficient cosmic ray transport, by streaming or diffusion, redistributes cosmic ray pressure from the cold gas to the background medium, resulting in cold gas properties that are in-between those predicted by simulations with inefficient transport and simulations without cosmic rays. We show that cosmic rays can significantly reduce galactic accretion rates and resolve the tension between theoretical models and observational constraints on the properties of cold CGM gas., Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ; 28 pages, 15 figures. Simulation movies can be found at https://www.irynabutsky.me/movies

We present new measurements of the spatial distribution and kinematics of neutral hydrogen in the circumgalactic and intergalactic medium surrounding star-forming galaxies at z ~ 2. Using the spectra of ~ 3000 galaxies with redshifts +/- 0.4 from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS), we assemble a sample of more than 200,000 distinct foreground-background pairs with projected angular separations of 3 - 500 arcsec and spectroscopic redshifts, with <$z_{fg}$> = 2.23 and <$z_{bg}$> = 2.57. The ensemble of sightlines and foreground galaxies is used to construct a 2D map of the mean excess Ly$\alpha$ optical depth relative to the intergalactic mean as a function of projected galactocentric distance (20 < $D_{tran}$/pkpc < 4000) and line-of-sight velocity. We provide information on the line-of-sight kinematics of H I gas as a function of projected distance $D_{tran}$. We compare the map with cosmological zoom-in simulation, finding qualitative agreement between them. A simple two-component (accretion, outflow) analytical model generally reproduces the observed line-of-sight kinematics and projected spatial distribution of H I. The best-fitting model suggests that galaxy-scale outflows with initial velocity $v_{out}$ ~ 600 km/s dominate the kinematics of circumgalactic H I out to $D_{tran}$ ~ 50 kpc, while H I at $D_{tran}$ > 100 kpc is dominated by infall with characteristic $v_{in}$ < $v_c$, where $v_c$ is the circular velocity of the host halo ($M_h$ ~ $10^{12} M_\odot$). Over the impact parameter range 80 < $D_{tran}$/pkpc < 200, the H I line-of-sight velocity range reaches a minimum, with a corresponding flattening in the rest-frame Ly$\alpha$ equivalent width. These observations can be naturally explained as the transition between outflow-dominated and accretion-dominated flows. Beyond $D_{tran}$ ~ 300 kpc, the line of sight kinematics are dominated by Hubble expansion., Comment: 27 pages, 24 figures, 3 tables, accepted by MNRAS. Additional data at http://ramekin.caltech.edu/KBSS/

We investigate the impact of cosmic rays (CRs) on the circumgalactic medium (CGM) in FIRE-2 simulations, for ultra-faint dwarf through Milky Way (MW)-mass halos hosting star-forming (SF) galaxies. Our CR treatment includes injection by supernovae, anisotropic streaming and diffusion along magnetic field lines, collisional and streaming losses, with constant parallel diffusivity $\kappa\sim3\times10^{29}\,\mathrm{cm^2\ s^{-1}}$ chosen to match $\gamma$-ray observations. With this, CRs become more important at larger halo masses and lower redshifts, and dominate the pressure in the CGM in MW-mass halos at $z\lesssim 1-2$. The gas in these "CR-dominated" halos differs significantly from runs without CRs: the gas is primarily cool (a few $\sim10^{4}\,$K), and the cool phase is volume-filling and has a thermal pressure below that needed for virial or local thermal pressure balance. Ionization of the "low" and "mid" ions in this diffuse cool gas is dominated by photo-ionization, with O VI columns $\gtrsim 10^{14.5}\,\mathrm{cm^{-2}}$ at distances $\gtrsim 150\,\mathrm{kpc}$. CR and thermal gas pressure are locally anti-correlated, maintaining total pressure balance, and the CGM gas density profile is determined by the balance of CR pressure gradients and gravity. Neglecting CRs, the same halos are primarily warm/hot ($T\gtrsim 10^{5}\,$K) with thermal pressure balancing gravity, collisional ionization dominates, O VI columns are lower and Ne VIII higher, and the cool phase is confined to dense filaments in local thermal pressure equilibrium with the hot phase., Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, published version on MNRAS

We present a suite of high-resolution cosmological simulations, using the FIRE-2 feedback physics together with explicit treatment of magnetic fields, anisotropic conduction and viscosity, and cosmic rays (CRs) injected by supernovae (including anisotropic diffusion, streaming, adiabatic, hadronic and Coulomb losses). We survey systems from ultra-faint dwarf ($M_{\ast}\sim 10^{4}\,M_{\odot}$, $M_{\rm halo}\sim 10^{9}\,M_{\odot}$) through Milky Way masses, systematically vary CR parameters (e.g. the diffusion coefficient $\kappa$ and streaming velocity), and study an ensemble of galaxy properties (masses, star formation histories, mass profiles, phase structure, morphologies). We confirm previous conclusions that magnetic fields, conduction, and viscosity on resolved ($\gtrsim 1\,$pc) scales have small effects on bulk galaxy properties. CRs have relatively weak effects on all galaxy properties studied in dwarfs ($M_{\ast} \ll 10^{10}\,M_{\odot}$, $M_{\rm halo} \lesssim 10^{11}\,M_{\odot}$), or at high redshifts ($z\gtrsim 1-2$), for any physically-reasonable parameters. However at higher masses ($M_{\rm halo} \gtrsim 10^{11}\,M_{\odot}$) and $z\lesssim 1-2$, CRs can suppress star formation by factors $\sim 2-4$, given relatively high effective diffusion coefficients $\kappa \gtrsim 3\times10^{29}\,{\rm cm^{2}\,s^{-1}}$. At lower $\kappa$, CRs take too long to escape dense star-forming gas and lose energy to hadronic collisions, producing negligible effects on galaxies and violating empirical constraints from $\gamma$-ray emission. But around $\kappa\sim 3\times10^{29}\,{\rm cm^{2}\,s^{-1}}$, CRs escape the galaxy and build up a CR-pressure-dominated halo which supports dense, cool ($T\ll 10^{6}$ K) gas that would otherwise rain onto the galaxy. CR heating (from collisional and streaming losses) is never dominant., Comment: 35 pages, 23 figures. Updated to match published (MNRAS) version

We present results from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS) including the first detailed measurements of the column densities, kinematics, and internal energy of metal-bearing gas within the virial radius (35-100 physical kpc) of eight ~$L^*$ galaxies at $z\sim2$. From our full sample of 130 metal-bearing absorbers, we infer that halo gas is kinematically complex when viewed in singly, doubly, and triply ionized species. Broad OVI and CIV absorbers are detected at similar velocities to the lower-ionization gas but with very different kinematic structure indicating that the circumgalactic medium (CGM) is multi-phase. There is a high covering fraction of metal-bearing gas within 100 kpc including highly ionized gas such as OVI; however, observations of a single galaxy probed by a lensed background QSO suggest the size of metal-bearing clouds is small (<400 pc for all but the OVI-bearing gas). The mass in metals found within the halo is substantial, equivalent to $\gtrsim$ 25% of the metal mass within the interstellar medium. The gas kinematics unambiguously show that 70% of galaxies with detected metal absorption have some unbound metal-enriched gas, suggesting galactic winds may commonly eject gas from halos at $z\sim2$. Significant thermal broadening is detected in CGM absorbers which dominates the internal energy of the gas. 40% of the detected gas has temperatures in the range $10^{4.5-5.5}$ K where cooling times are short, suggesting the CGM is dynamic, with constant heating and/or cooling to produce this short-lived thermal phase., Comment: submitted to ApJ

Traditional cosmological hydrodynamics simulations fail to spatially resolve the circumgalatic medium (CGM), the reservoir of tenuous gas surrounding a galaxy and extending to its virial radius. We introduce the technique of Enhanced Halo Resolution (EHR), enabling more realistic physical modeling of the simulated CGM by consistently forcing gas refinement to smaller scales throughout the virial halo of a simulated galaxy. We investigate the effects of EHR in the Tempest simulations, a suite of Enzo-based cosmological zoom simulations following the evolution of an L* galaxy, resolving spatial scales of 500 comoving pc out to 100 comoving kpc in galactocentric radius. Among its many effects, EHR (1) changes the thermal balance of the CGM, increasing its cool gas content and decreasing its warm/hot gas content; (2) preserves cool gas structures for longer periods; and (3) enables these cool clouds to exist at progressively smaller size scales. Observationally, this results in a boost in "low ions" like H I and a drop in "high ions" like O VI throughout the CGM. These effects of EHR do not converge in the Tempest simulations, but extrapolating these trends suggests that the CGM in reality is a mist consisting of ubiquitous, small, long-lived, cool clouds suspended in a hot medium at the virial temperature of the halo. Additionally, we explore the physical mechanisms to explain why EHR produces the above effects, proposing that it works both by (1) better sampling the distribution of CGM phases enabling runaway cooling in the denser, cooler tail of the phase distribution; and (2) preventing cool gas clouds from artificially mixing with the ambient hot halo and evaporating. Evidence is found for both EHR mechanisms occurring in the Tempest simulations., Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, submitted to ApJ. Simulation movies available at http://chummels.org/tempest

We present simulations from the new "Figuring Out Gas & Galaxies in Enzo" (FOGGIE) project. In contrast to most extant simulations of galaxy formation, which concentrate computational resources on galactic disks and spheroids with fluid and particle elements of fixed mass, the FOGGIE simulations focus on extreme spatial and mass resolution in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) surrounding galaxies. Using the Enzo code and a new refinement scheme, FOGGIE reaches spatial resolutions of 381 comoving $h^{-1}$ pc and resolves extremely low masses ($\lesssim 1$--$100$ Msun out to 100 comoving $h^{-1}$ kpc from the central halo. At these resolutions, cloud and filament-like structures giving rise to simulated absorption are smaller, and better resolved, than the same structures simulated with standard density-dependent refinement. Most of the simulated absorption arises in identifiable and well-resolved structures with masses $\lesssim 10^4$ Msun, well below the mass resolution of typical zoom simulations. However, integrated quantities such as mass surface density and ionic covering fractions change at only the $\lesssim 30$% level as resolution is varied. This relatively small changes in projected quantities---even when the sizes and distribution of absorbing clouds change dramatically---indicate that commonly used observables provide only weak constraints on the physical structure of the underlying gas. Comparing the simulated absorption features to the KODIAQ (Keck Observatory Database of Ionized Absorption toward Quasars) survey of $z \sim2$--$3.5$ Lyman limit systems, we show that high-resolution FOGGIE runs better resolve the internal kinematic structure of detected absorption, and better match the observed distribution of absorber properties. These results indicate that CGM resolution is key in properly testing simulations of galaxy evolution with circumgalactic observations., Comment: ApJ, in press. New appendix with results from simulation with 78pc resolution CGM at z=2.5 now included. Appendix C with additional velocity phase diagrams has been omitted to fit within the arXiv space restraints

We present the extended GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (xGASS), a gas fraction-limited census of the atomic (HI) gas content of 1179 galaxies selected only by stellar mass ($M_\star =10^{9}-10^{11.5} M_\odot$) and redshift ($0.01

We present the Grackle chemistry and cooling library for astrophysical simulations and models. Grackle provides a treatment of non-equilibrium primordial chemistry and cooling for H, D, and He species, including H2 formation on dust grains; tabulated primordial and metal cooling; multiple UV background models; and support for radiation transfer and arbitrary heat sources. The library has an easily implementable interface for simulation codes written in C, C++, and Fortran as well as a Python interface with added convenience functions for semi-analytical models. As an open-source project, Grackle provides a community resource for accessing and disseminating astrochemical data and numerical methods. We present the full details of the core functionality, the simulation and Python interfaces, testing infrastructure, performance, and range of applicability. Grackle is a fully open-source project and new contributions are welcome., Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. For more info, visit grackle.readthedocs.io

Using an isolated Milky Way-mass galaxy simulation, we compare results from 9 state-of-the-art gravito-hydrodynamics codes widely used in the numerical community. We utilize the infrastructure we have built for the AGORA High-resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project. This includes the common disk initial conditions, common physics models (e.g., radiative cooling and UV background by the standardized package Grackle) and common analysis toolkit yt, all of which are publicly available. Subgrid physics models such as Jeans pressure floor, star formation, supernova feedback energy, and metal production are carefully constrained across code platforms. With numerical accuracy that resolves the disk scale height, we find that the codes overall agree well with one another in many dimensions including: gas and stellar surface densities, rotation curves, velocity dispersions, density and temperature distribution functions, disk vertical heights, stellar clumps, star formation rates, and Kennicutt-Schmidt relations. Quantities such as velocity dispersions are very robust (agreement within a few tens of percent at all radii) while measures like newly-formed stellar clump mass functions show more significant variation (difference by up to a factor of ~3). Systematic differences exist, for example, between mesh-based and particle-based codes in the low density region, and between more diffusive and less diffusive schemes in the high density tail of the density distribution. Yet intrinsic code differences are generally small compared to the variations in numerical implementations of the common subgrid physics such as supernova feedback. Our experiment reassures that, if adequately designed in accordance with our proposed common parameters, results of a modern high-resolution galaxy formation simulation are more sensitive to input physics than to intrinsic differences in numerical schemes., Comment: 28 pages, 35 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, Image resolution greatly reduced, High-resolution version of this article is available at http://www.jihoonkim.org/agora/AGORA_Paper4_draft.pdf, The first paper of the AGORA Initiative is at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014ApJS..210...14K, More information on AGORA is at http://www.AGORAsimulations.org/

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., Comment: 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/

We present the final data release from the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey (GASS), a large Arecibo program that measured the HI properties for an unbiased sample of ~800 galaxies with stellar masses greater than 10^10 Msun and redshifts 0.025

We present moderate resolution (~6 km/s) spectroscopy of 284 M giant candidates selected from the Two Micron All Sky Survey photometry. Radial velocities (RVs) are presented for stars mainly in the south, with a number having positions consistent with association to the trailing tidal tail of the Sagittarius (Sgr) dwarf galaxy. The latter show a clear RV trend with orbital longitude, as expected from models of the orbit and destruction of Sgr. A minimum 8 kpc width of the trailing stream about the Sgr orbital midplane is implied by verified RV members. The coldness of this stream (dispersion ~10 km/s) provides upper limits on the combined contributions of stream heating by a lumpy Galactic halo and the intrinsic dispersion of released stars, which is a function of the Sgr core mass. The Sgr trailing arm is consistent with a Galactic halo containing one dominant, LMC-like lump, however some lumpier halos are not ruled out. An upper limit to the total M/L of the Sgr core is 21 in solar units. A second structure that roughly mimics expectations for wrapped, leading Sgr arm debris crosses the trailing arm in the Southern Hemisphere; however, this may also be an unrelated tidal feature. Among the <13 kpc M giants toward the South Galactic Pole are some with large RVs that identify them as halo stars, perhaps part of the Sgr leading arm near the Sun. The positions and RVs of Southern Hemisphere M giants are compared with those of southern globular clusters potentially stripped from the Sgr system and support for association of Pal 2 and Pal 12 with Sgr debris is found. Our discussion includes description of a masked-filtered cross-correlation methodology that achieves better than 1/20 of a resolution element RVs in moderate resolution spectra., Comment: 41 pages, 6 figures, Astronomical Journal, in press (submitted Nov. 24, 2003; tentatively scheduled for July 2004 issue)