Collaborative Research:CDS&E: Mining Physically Predictive Cosmological Simulations

This proposal seeks to support the FIRE (Feedback in Realistic Environments) project to carry out novel computational studies of galaxy formation using high-resolution, cosmological simulations that resolve the interstellar medium (ISM) with unprecedented realism. When the ISM is explicitly resolved into dense molecular clouds, star formation is confined to high-density regions and, as it proceeds, injects large quantities of energy and momentum into the surrounding medium via “stellar feedback.” This stellar feedback is critical to produce realistic galaxies and to generate powerful galactic winds that are observed. Galactic winds generated by stellar feedback also have important effects on the circum-galactic and intergalactic media (CGM, IGM), and understanding them is a key frontier both theoretically and observationally.