Numerical simulations of galaxy evolution in cosmological context

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method coupling large-scale cosmological simulations with high-resolution galaxy simulations to better understand galaxy evolution within a realistic cosmological framework, emphasizing the role of gas accretion.

Contribution

The study presents a new approach that combines cosmological and galaxy-scale simulations, enabling detailed analysis of galaxy evolution with realistic gas accretion processes.

Findings

Gas accretion along filaments is crucial for galaxy evolution.

Coupled simulations provide insights into internal galaxy development.

Method allows statistical study from redshift 2 to 0.

Abstract

Large volume cosmological simulations succeed in reproducing the large-scale structure of the Universe. However, they lack resolution and may not take into account all relevant physical processes to test if the detail properties of galaxies can be explained by the CDM paradigm. On the other hand, galaxy-scale simulations could resolve this in a robust way but do not usually include a realistic cosmological context. To study galaxy evolution in cosmological context, we use a new method that consists in coupling cosmological simulations and galactic scale simulations. For this, we record merger and gas accretion histories from cosmological simulations and re-simulate at very high resolution the evolution of baryons and dark matter within the virial radius of a target galaxy. This allows us for example to better take into account gas evolution and associated star formation, to finely study the internal evolution of galaxies and their disks in a realistic cosmological context. We aim at obtaining a statistical view on galaxy evolution from z = 2 to 0, and we present here the first results of the study: we mainly stress the importance of taking into account gas accretion along filaments to understand galaxy evolution.