GARROTXA Cosmological Simulations of Milky Way-sized Galaxies: General Properties, Hot Gas Distribution, and Missing Baryons

TL;DR

This paper presents GARROTXA, a new set of high-resolution cosmological simulations of Milky Way-sized galaxies, analyzing their properties, hot gas distribution, and the missing baryons problem, with implications for observational interpretations.

Contribution

Introduction of GARROTXA, a novel simulation series modeling Milky Way-like galaxies with detailed analysis of their properties and hot gas distribution.

Findings

Circular velocity curves match recent MW observations.

Stellar mass and disk size fall within MW observational range.

Hot gas is distributed in halo and filaments, not in a massive disk-like structure.

Abstract

We introduce a new set of simulations of Milky Way-sized galaxies using the AMR code ART + hydrodynamics in a $\Lambda$CDM cosmogony. The simulation series is named GARROTXA and follow the formation of a halo/galaxy from z~$=$~60 to z~$=$~0. The final virial mass of the system is $\sim$7.4$\times$10$^{11}$M$_{\odot}$. Our results are as follows: (a) contrary to many previous studies, the circular velocity curve shows no central peak and overall agrees with recent MW observations. (b) Other quantities, such as M$\_{*}$(6$\times$10$^{10}$M$_\odot$) and R$_d$ (2.56 kpc), fall well inside the observational MW range. (c) We measure the disk-to-total ratio kinematically and find that D/T=0.42. (d) The cold gas fraction and star formation rate (SFR) at z=0, on the other hand, fall short from the values estimated for the Milky Way. As a first scientific exploitation of the simulation series, we study the spatial distribution of the hot X-ray luminous gas. We have found that most of this X-ray emitting gas is in a halo-like distribution accounting for an important fraction but not all of the missing baryons. An important amount of hot gas is also present in filaments. In all our models there is not a massive disk-like hot gas distribution dominating the column density. Our analysis of hot gas mock observations reveals that the homogeneity assumption leads to an overestimation of the total mass by factors 3 to 5 or to an underestimation by factors $0.7-0.1$, depending on the used observational method. Finally, we confirm a clear correlation between the total hot gas mass and the dark matter halo mass of galactic systems.