Hydrodynamical Adaptive Mesh Refinement Simulations of Disk Galaxies

Abstract

To date, fully cosmological hydrodynamic disk simulations to redshift zero have only been undertaken with particle-based codes, such as GADGET, Gasoline, or GCD+. In light of the (supposed) limitations of traditional implementations of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), or at the very least, their respective idiosyncrasies, it is important to explore complementary approaches to the SPH paradigm to galaxy formation. We present the first high-resolution cosmological disk simulations to redshift zero using an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR)-based hydrodynamical code, in this case, RAMSES. We analyse the temporal and spatial evolution of the simulated stellar disks' vertical heating, velocity ellipsoids, stellar populations, vertical and radial abundance gradients (gas and stars), assembly/infall histories, warps/lopsideness, disk edges/truncations (gas and stars), ISM physics implementations, and compare and contrast these properties with our sample of cosmological SPH disks, generated with GCD+. These preliminary results are the first in our long-term Galactic Archaeology Simulation program.