The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
Joop Schaye, Robert A. Crain, Richard G. Bower, Michelle Furlong,, Matthieu Schaller, Tom Theuns, Claudio Dalla Vecchia, Carlos S. Frenk, I. G., McCarthy, John C. Helly, Adrian Jenkins, Y. M. Rosas-Guevara, Simon D. M., White, Maarten Baes, C. M. Booth, Peter Camps

TL;DR
The EAGLE project presents hydrodynamical simulations that accurately reproduce key galaxy properties and observables, improving our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution.
Contribution
This work introduces a novel feedback implementation and calibration method, achieving unprecedented agreement with observed galaxy mass functions and other properties in hydrodynamical simulations.
Findings
Reproduces galaxy stellar mass function within 0.2 dex across a wide mass range
Good agreement with observed galaxy star formation rates and cluster luminosities
Identifies discrepancies in gas metallicity slopes and cluster gas properties
Abstract
We introduce the Virgo Consortium's EAGLE project, a suite of hydrodynamical simulations that follow the formation of galaxies and black holes in representative volumes. We discuss the limitations of such simulations in light of their finite resolution and poorly constrained subgrid physics, and how these affect their predictive power. One major improvement is our treatment of feedback from massive stars and AGN in which thermal energy is injected into the gas without the need to turn off cooling or hydrodynamical forces, allowing winds to develop without predetermined speed or mass loading factors. Because the feedback efficiencies cannot be predicted from first principles, we calibrate them to the z~0 galaxy stellar mass function and the amplitude of the galaxy-central black hole mass relation, also taking galaxy sizes into account. The observed galaxy mass function is reproduced to…
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