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Galaxy formation hydrodynamics: From cosmic flows to star-forming clouds
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2011
Abstract
Major progress has been made over the last few years in understanding hydrodynamical processes on cosmological scales, in particular how galaxies get their baryons. There is increasing recognition that a large part of the baryons accrete smoothly onto galaxies, and that internal evolution processes play a major role in shaping galaxies – mergers are not necessarily the dominant process. However, predictions from the various assembly mechanisms are still in large disagreement with the observed properties of galaxies in the nearby Universe. Small-scale processes have a major impact on the global evolution of galaxies over a Hubble time and the usual sub-grid models account for them in a far too uncertain way. Understanding when, where and at which rate galaxies formed their stars becomes crucial to understand the formation of galaxy populations. I discuss recent improvements and current limitations in “resolved” modeling of star formation, aiming at explicitly capturing star-forming instabilities, in cosmological and galaxy-sized simulations. Such models need to develop three-dimensional turbulence in the ISM, which requires parsec-scale resolution at redshift zero.
- Type
- Contributed Papers
- Information
- Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 6 , Symposium S270: Computational Star Formation , May 2010 , pp. 491 - 498
- Copyright
- Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2011
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