We introduce an updated physical model to simulate the formation and evolution of galaxies in cosmological, large-scale gravity+magnetohydrodynamical simulations with the moving mesh code AREPO. The overall framework builds upon the successes of the Illustris galaxy formation model, and includes prescriptions for star formation, stellar evolution, chemical enrichment, primordial and metal-line cooling of the gas, stellar feedback with galactic outflows, and black hole formation, growth and multi-mode feedback. In this paper we give a comprehensive description of the physical and numerical advances which form the core of the IllustrisTNG (The Next Generation) framework. We focus on the revised implementation of the galactic winds, of which we modify the directionality, velocity, thermal content, and energy scalings, and explore its effects on the galaxy population. As described in earlier works, the model also includes a new black hole driven kinetic feedback at low accretion rates, magnetohydrodynamics, and improvements to the numerical scheme. Using a suite of (25 Mpc h −1 ) 3 cosmological boxes we assess the outcome of the new model at our fiducial resolution. The presence of a self-consistently amplified magnetic field is shown to have an important impact on the stellar content of 10 12 M haloes and above. Finally, we demonstrate that the new galactic winds promise to solve key problems identified in Illustris in matching observational constraints and affecting the stellar content and sizes of the low mass end of the galaxy population.

The IllustrisTNG project is a new suite of cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation performed with the AREPO code and updated models for feedback physics. Here we introduce the first two simulations of the series, TNG100 and TNG300, and quantify the stellar mass content of about 4000 massive galaxy groups and clusters (10 13 M 200c /M 10 15 ) at recent times (z 1). The richest clusters have half of their total stellar mass bound to satellite galaxies, with the other half being associated with the central galaxy and the diffuse intra-cluster light. Haloes more massive than about 5 × 10 14 M have more diffuse stellar mass outside 100 kpc than within 100 kpc, with power-law slopes of the radial mass density distribution as shallow as the dark matter's ( −3.5 α 3D−3). Total halo mass is a very good predictor of stellar mass, and vice versa: at z = 0, the 3D stellar mass measured within 30 kpc scales as ∝ (M 500c ) 0.49 with a ∼ 0.12 dex scatter. This is possibly too steep in comparison to the available observational constraints, even though the abundance of TNG less massive galaxies ( 10 11 M in stars) is in good agreement with the measured galaxy stellar mass functions at recent epochs. The 3D sizes of massive galaxies fall too on a tight (∼0.16 dex scatter) power-law relation with halo mass, with r stars 0.5 ∝ (M 200c ) 0.53 . Even more fundamentally, halo mass alone is a good predictor for the whole stellar mass profiles beyond the inner few kpc, and we show how on average these can be precisely recovered given a single mass measurement of the galaxy or its halo.

Hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation have now reached sufficient volume to make precision predictions for clustering on cosmologically relevant scales. Here we use our new IllustrisTNG simulations to study the non-linear correlation functions and power spectra of baryons, dark matter, galaxies and haloes over an exceptionally large range of scales. We find that baryonic effects increase the clustering of dark matter on small scales and damp the total matter power spectrum on scales up to k ∼ 10 h Mpc −1 by 20%. The non-linear two-point correlation function of the stellar mass is close to a power-law over a wide range of scales and approximately invariant in time from very high redshift to the present. The two-point correlation function of the simulated galaxies agrees well with SDSS at its mean redshift z 0.1, both as a function of stellar mass and when split according to galaxy colour, apart from a mild excess in the clustering of red galaxies in the stellar mass range 10 9 − 10 10 h −2 M . Given this agreement, the TNG simulations can make valuable theoretical predictions for the clustering bias of different galaxy samples. We find that the clustering length of the galaxy auto-correlation function depends strongly on stellar mass and redshift. Its power-law slope γ is nearly invariant with stellar mass, but declines from γ ∼ 1.8 at redshift z = 0 to γ ∼ 1.6 at redshift z ∼ 1, beyond which the slope steepens again. We detect significant scaledependencies in the bias of different observational tracers of large-scale structure, extending well into the range of the baryonic acoustic oscillations and causing nominal (yet fortunately correctable) shifts of the acoustic peaks of around ∼ 5%.

We introduce the first two simulations of the IllustrisTNG project, a next generation of cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations, focusing on the optical colors of galaxies. We explore TNG100, a rerun of the original Illustris box, and TNG300, which includes 2×2500 3 resolution elements in a volume twenty times larger. Here we present first results on the galaxy color bimodality at low redshift. Accounting for the attenuation of stellar light by dust, we compare the simulated (g-r) colors of 10 9 < M /M < 10 12.5 galaxies to the observed distribution from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find a striking improvement with respect to the original Illustris simulation, as well as excellent quantitative agreement with the observations, with a sharp transition in median color from blue to red at a characteristic M ∼ 10 10.5 M . Investigating the build-up of the color-mass plane and the formation of the red sequence, we demonstrate that the primary driver of galaxy color transition is supermassive blackhole feedback in its low-accretion state. Across the entire population the median color transition timescale ∆t green is ∼ 1.6 Gyr, a value which drops for increasingly massive galaxies. We find signatures of the physical process of quenching: at fixed stellar mass, redder galaxies have lower SFRs, gas fractions, and gas metallicities; their stellar populations are also older and their large-scale interstellar magnetic fields weaker than in bluer galaxies. Finally, we measure the amount of stellar mass growth on the red sequence. Galaxies with M > 10 11 M which redden at z < 1 accumulate on average ∼ 25% of their final z = 0 mass post-reddening; at the same time, ∼ 18% of such massive galaxies acquire half or more of their final stellar mass while on the red sequence.