Zooming in on the circumgalactic medium: resolving small-scale gas structure with the GIBLE cosmological simulations

TL;DR

The GIBLE simulations provide ultra-high resolution insights into the small-scale structure of the circumgalactic medium around Milky Way-like galaxies, improving understanding of gas properties and observational tracers.

Contribution

This study introduces a novel super-Lagrangian refinement scheme in cosmological simulations to resolve CGM gas at unprecedented small scales.

Findings

Small cold gas clouds increase with resolution but massive clouds are converged.

Resolution improves predictions of CGM observational tracers like HI, MgII, CIV, OVII.

Small-scale velocity and density structures are resolution-dependent.

Abstract

We introduce Project GIBLE (Gas Is Better resoLved around galaxiEs), a suite of cosmological zoom-in simulations where gas in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) is preferentially simulated at ultra-high numerical resolution. Our initial sample consists of eight galaxies, all selected as Milky Way-like galaxies at $z=0$ from the TNG50 simulation. Using the same galaxy formation model as IllustrisTNG, and the moving-mesh code AREPO, we re-simulate each of these eight galaxies maintaining a resolution equivalent to TNG50-2 ($m_{\rm{gas}}$ $\sim$ $8 \times 10^5 {\rm M}_{\odot}$). However, we use our super-Lagrangian refinement scheme to more finely resolve gas in the CGM around these galaxies. Our highest resolution runs achieve 512 times better mass resolution ($\sim$ $10^3 {\rm M}_{\odot}$). This corresponds to a median spatial resolution of $\sim$ $75$ pc at $0.15~R_{\rm{200,c}}$, which coarsens with increasing distance to $\sim$ $700$ pc at the virial radius. We make predictions for the covering fractions of several observational tracers of multi-phase CGM gas: HI, MgII, CIV and OVII. We then study the impact of improved resolution on small scale structure. While the abundance of the smallest cold, dense gas clouds continues to increase with improving resolution, the number of massive clouds is well converged. We conclude by quantifying small scale structure with the velocity structure function and the auto-correlation function of the density field, assessing their resolution dependence. The GIBLE cosmological hydrodynamical simulations enable us to improve resolution in a computationally efficient manner, thereby achieving numerical convergence of a subset of key CGM gas properties and observables.