Public data release of the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of galaxy formation

Wetzel, Andrew; Hayward, Christopher C.; Sanderson, Robyn E.; Ma, Xiangcheng; Anglés-Alcázar, Daniel; Feldmann, Robert; Chan, T. K; El-Badry, Kareem; Wheeler, Coral; Garrison-Kimmel, Shea; Nikakhtar, Farnik; Panithanpaisal, Nondh; Arora, Arpit; Gurvich, Alexander B.; Samuel, Jenna; Sameie, Omid; Pandya, Viraj; Hummels, Cameron; Loebman, Sarah; Boylan-Kolchin, Michael; Bullock, James S.; Faucher-Giguère, Claude-André; Kereš, Dušan; Quataert, Eliot; Hopkins, Philip F.

doi:10.48550/arxiv.2202.06969

Cited by 22 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…Of the 35 NIHAO galaxies presented in Buck (2020), only one shows a transition at the low metallicity seen in the data (g5.31e11). This result is in agreement with Belokurov & Kravtsov (2022), who find that the transition between hot and cold kinematics occurs too late in the Latte (Wetzel et al 2022) and Auriga (Grand et al 2018b) simulations. For the NIHAO simulations, mergers appear to be the main driver of the enhanced star formation efficiency and non-monotonic abundance behavior.…”

Section: Comparison To Simulationssupporting

confidence: 92%

Birth of the Galactic Disk Revealed by the H3 Survey

Conroy¹,

Weinberg²,

Naidu³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We use chemistry ([α/Fe] and [Fe/H]), main sequence turnoff ages, and kinematics determined from H3 Survey spectroscopy and Gaia astrometry to identify the birth of the Galactic disk. We separate in-situ and accreted stars on the basis of angular momenta and eccentricities. The sequence of high−α in-situ stars persists down to at least [Fe/H] ≈ −2.5 and shows unexpected non-monotonic behavior: with increasing metallicity the population first declines in [α/Fe], then increases over the range −1.3 [Fe/H] −0.7, and then declines again at higher metallicities. The number of stars in the in-situ population rapidly increases above [Fe/H] ≈ −1. The average kinematics of these stars are hot and independent of metallicity at [Fe/H] −1 and then become increasingly cold and disk-like at higher metallicities. The ages of the in-situ, high−α stars are uniformly very old (≈ 13 Gyr) at [Fe/H] −1.3, and span a wider range (8 − 12 Gyr) at higher metallicities. Interpreting the chemistry with a simple chemical evolution model suggests that the non-monotonic behavior is due to a significant increase in star formation efficiency, which began ≈ 13 Gyr ago. These results support a picture in which the first ≈ 1 Gyr of the Galaxy was characterized by a "simmering phase" in which the star formation efficiency was low and the kinematics had substantial disorder with some net rotation. The disk then underwent a dramatic transformation to a "boiling phase", in which the star formation efficiency increased substantially, the kinematics became disk-like, and the number of stars formed increased tenfold. We interpret this transformation as the birth of the Galactic disk at z ≈ 4. The physical origin of this transformation is unclear and does not seem to be reproduced in current galaxy formation models.

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Section: Comparison To Simulationssupporting

confidence: 92%

Birth of the Galactic Disk Revealed by the H3 Survey

Conroy¹,

Weinberg²,

Naidu³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Figure 14 shows evolution of halo mass defined within the density contrast 200 times the critical density, as well as the metallicity-age relation for stars and evolution of star formation rate for a sample of galaxies forming in Milky Way-sized haloes in the GRUMPY regulator model (Kravtsov & Manwadkar 2021) using mass accretion histories from the ELVIS suite of dark matter simulations (Garrison-Kimmel et al 2014), and cosmologi- cal zoom-in N -body+hydrodynamics simulations of several Milky Way-mass galaxies from the FIRE-2 simulation public data release 3 (Wetzel et al 2022). 4 , as well as the Auriga simulations available in the Aurigaia public release (Grand et al 2018).…”

Section: Evolution Of Stellar Mass Metallicity and Star Formation Rat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…edu/ananke/), FIRE-2 simulation public data (http:// flathub.flatironinstitute.org/fire), and Auriga (http://wwwmpa.mpa-garching.mpg.de/auriga/) simulation teams for making their simulation results publicly available. We use simulations from the FIRE-2 public data release (Wetzel et al 2022). The FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of galaxy formation are part of the Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE) project, generated using the Gizmo code (Hopkins 2015) and the FIRE-2 physics model (Hopkins et al 2018).…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From dawn till disk: Milky Way's turbulent youth revealed by the APOGEE+Gaia data

Belokurov,

Kravtsov

2022

Preprint

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We use accurate estimates of aluminium abundance provided as part of the APOGEE Data Release 17 and Gaia Early Data Release 3 astrometry to select a highly pure sample of stars with metallicity −1.5[Fe/H] 0.5 born in-situ in the Milky Way proper. We show that the low-metallicity ([Fe/H] −1.3) in-situ component that we dub Aurora is kinematically hot with an approximately isotropic velocity ellipsoid and a modest net rotation. Aurora stars exhibit large scatter in metallicity and in a number of element abundance ratios. The median tangential velocity of the in-situ stars increases sharply with increasing metallicity between [Fe/H]= −1.3 and −0.9, the transition that we call the spin-up. The observed and theoretically expected age-metallicity correlations imply that this increase reflects a rapid formation of the Milky Way disk over ≈ 1 − 2 Gyrs. The transformation of the stellar kinematics as a function of [Fe/H] is accompanied by a qualitative change in chemical abundances: the scatter drops sharply once the Galaxy builds up a disk during later epochs corresponding to [Fe/H]> −0.9. Results of galaxy formation models presented in this and other recent studies strongly indicate that the trends observed in the Milky Way reflect generic processes during the early evolution of progenitors of MW-sized galaxies: a period of chaotic pre-disk evolution, when gas is accreted along cold narrow filaments and when stars are born in irregular configurations, and subsequent rapid disk formation. The latter signals formation of a stable hot gaseous halo around the MW progenitor, which changes the mode of gas accretion and allows development of coherently rotating disk.

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“…The data in these figures are available at https:// mbellardini.github.io/. The FIRE-2 simulations are publicly available (Wetzel et al 2022)…”

Section: Data Availabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

3D elemental abundances of stars at formation across the histories of Milky Way-mass galaxies in the FIRE simulations

Bellardini,

Wetzel,

Loebman

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We characterize the 3-D spatial variations of [Fe/H], [Mg/H], and [Mg/Fe] in stars at the time of their formation, across 11 simulated Milky Way (MW)-and M31-mass galaxies in the FIRE-2 simulations, to inform initial conditions for chemical tagging. The overall scatter in [Fe/H] within a galaxy decreased with time until ≈ 7 Gyr ago, after which it increased to today: this arises from a competition between a reduction of azimuthal scatter and a steepening of the radial gradient in abundance over time. The radial gradient is generally negative, and it steepened over time from an initially flat gradient 12 Gyr ago. The strength of the present-day abundance gradient does not correlate with when the disk 'settled'; instead, it best correlates with the radial velocity dispersion within the galaxy. The strength of azimuthal variation is nearly independent of radius, and the 360 degree scatter decreased over time, from 0.17 dex at t lb = 11.6 Gyr to ∼ 0.04 dex at present day. Consequently, stars at t lb 8 Gyr formed in a disk with primarily azimuthal scatter in abundances. All stars formed in a vertically homogeneous disk, ∆[Fe/H]≤ 0.02 dex within 1 kpc of the galactic midplane, with the exception of the young stars in the inner ≈ 4 kpc at z ∼ 0. These results generally agree with our previous analysis of gas-phase elemental abundances, which reinforces the importance of cosmological disk evolution and azimuthal scatter in the context of stellar chemical tagging. We provide analytic fits to our results for use in chemical-tagging analyses.

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Public data release of the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of galaxy formation

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Birth of the Galactic Disk Revealed by the H3 Survey

Birth of the Galactic Disk Revealed by the H3 Survey

From dawn till disk: Milky Way's turbulent youth revealed by the APOGEE+Gaia data

3D elemental abundances of stars at formation across the histories of Milky Way-mass galaxies in the FIRE simulations

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