Radiation feedback is typically implemented using subgrid recipes in hydrodynamical simulations of galaxies. Very little work has so far been performed using radiation-hydrodynamics (RHD), and there is no consensus on the importance of radiation feedback in galaxy evolution. We present RHD simulations of isolated galaxy discs of different masses with a resolution of 18 pc. Besides accounting for s

The strong time-dependence of the dynamics of galactic bars yields a complex and rapidly evolving distribution of dense gas and star forming regions. Although bars mainly host regions void of any star formation activity, their extremities can gather the physical conditions for the formation of molecular complexes and mini-starbursts. Using a sub-parsec resolution hydrodynamical simulation of a Mil

Gravitational instabilities play a primary role in shaping the clumpy structure and powering the star formation activity of gas-rich high-redshift galaxies. Here, we analyse the stability of such systems, focusing on the size and mass ranges of unstable regions in the disc. Our analysis takes into account the mass-size and linewidth-size scaling relations observed in molecular gas, originally disc

Under conservative assumptions about the Galaxy, the derived velocity of the Smith Cloud indicates that it will have undergone at least one passage of the Galactic disc. Using hydrodynamicsimulations, we examine the present-day structure of the Smith Cloud and find that a dark matter supported cloud is able to reproduce the observed present-day neutral hydrogen mass, column density distribution an

We introduce the Assembling Galaxies Of Resolved Anatomy (AGORA) project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the ΛCDM cosmology. Cosmological hydrodynamic simulations with force resolutions of 100 proper pc or better will be run with a variety of code platforms to follow the hierarchical growth, star formation history, morphological transformation, and the cycle of ba

Observations of turbulent velocity dispersions in the H i component of galactic discs show a characteristic floor in galaxies with low star formation rates and within individual galaxies the dispersion profiles decline with radius. We carry out several high-resolution adaptive mesh simulations of gaseous discs embedded within dark matter haloes to explore the roles of cooling, star formation, feed

Galaxy formation models and simulations rely on various feedback mechanisms to reproduce the observed baryonic scaling relations and galaxy morphologies. Although dwarf galaxy and giant elliptical properties can be explained using feedback from supernova and active galactic nuclei, Milky Way-sized galaxies still represent a challenge to current theories of galaxy formation. In this paper, we explo

We present results from high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations of isolated Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)- and Milky-Way-sized galaxies that include a model for feedback from galactic cosmic rays (CRs). We find that CRs are naturally able to drive winds with mass loading factors of up to ∼10 in dwarf systems. The scaling of the mass loading factor with circular velocity between the two simulated s

We study the formation of disc galaxies in a fully cosmological framework using adaptive mesh refinement simulations. We perform an extensive parameter study of the main subgrid processes that control how gas is converted into stars and the coupled effect of supernovae feedback. We argue that previous attempts to form disc galaxies have been unsuccessful because of the universal adoption of strong

Standard formulations of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) are unable to resolve mixing at fluid boundaries. We use an error and stability analysis of the generalized SPH equations of motion to prove that this is due to two distinct problems. The first is a leading order error in the momentum equation. This should decrease with an increasing neighbour number, but does not because numerical ins

Dark matter direct detection experiments need to know the local phase space density of dark matter fdm(r,v,t) in order to derive dark matter particle properties. To date, calculations for fdm(r,v,t) have been based on simulations that model the dark matter alone. Here we include the influence of the baryonic matter. We find that a star/gas disc at high redshift (z∼1) causes merging satellites to b

A precise determination of the local dark matter density and an accurate control over the corresponding uncertainties are of paramount importance for dark matter (DM) searches. Using very recent high-resolution numerical simulations of a Milky Way like object, we study the systematic uncertainties that affect the determination of the local dark matter density based on dynamical measurements in the

We explore the gravitational instability of clumpy and turbulent gas discs, taking into account the Larson-type scaling laws observed in giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and H i, as well as more general scaling relations. This degree of freedom is of special interest in view of the coming high-z interstellar medium surveys and is thus potentially important for understanding the dynamical effects of t

The effects of particle discreteness in N-body ACDM simulations are still an intensively debated issue. In this paper we explore such effects, taking into account the scatter caused by the randomness of the initial conditions and focusing on the statistical properties of the cosmological density field. For this purpose, we run large sets of ACDM simulations and analyze them using a wide variety of

In a Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmology, the Milky Way accretes satellites into the stellar disc. We use cosmological simulations to assess the frequency of near disc plane and higher inclination accretion events, and collisionless simulations of satellite mergers to quantify the final state of the accreted material and the effect on the thin disc. On average, a Milky Way-sized galaxy has three s

Predicting the flux of dark matter particles through the Earth is vital for current and future direct dark matter detection experiments. To date, such predictions have been based on simulations that model the dark matter alone. Here we make the first attempt to include the influence of the baryonic matter. We show that the presence of a stellar/gas disc at high redshift (z ∼ 1) causes merging sate

We have carried out a comparison study of hydrodynamical codes by investigating their performance in modelling interacting multiphase fluids. The two commonly used techniques of grid and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) show striking differences in their ability to model processes that are fundamentally important across many areas of astrophysics. Whilst Eulerian grid based methods are able t

N-body simulations sample their initial conditions on an initial particle distribution, which for cosmological simulations is usually a glass or grid, while a Poisson distribution is used for galaxy models, spherical collapse, etc. These pre-initial conditions have inherent correlations, noise due to discreteness, and preferential alignments, while the glass distribution is poorly defined and comp

Since its discovery in 1996, the source of the bright Ha emission (up to 750 mR) along the Magellanic Stream has remained a mystery. There is no evidence of ionizing stars within the H I stream, and the extended hot halo is far too tenuous to drive strong shocks into the clouds. We now present a hydrodynamical model that explains the known properties of the Ha emission and provides new insights on

Let C be the unit circle in R2. We can view C as a plane graph whose vertices are all the points on C, and the distance between any two points on C is the length of the smaller arc between them. We consider a graph augmentation problem on C, where we want to place k⩾1 shortcuts on C such that the diameter of the resulting graph is minimized. We analyze for each k with 1⩽k⩽7 what the optimal set of