First Results from the TNG50 Simulation: Galactic outflows driven by supernovae and black hole feedback

2019 
We present the new TNG50 cosmological, magnetohydrodynamical simulation -- the third and final volume of the IllustrisTNG project. This simulation occupies a unique combination of large volume and high resolution, with a 50 Mpc box sampled by 2160^3 gas cells (baryon mass of 8x10^4 solar masses). The median spatial resolution of star-forming ISM gas is ~100-140 parsecs (from z=0 to z=6). This resolution approaches or exceeds that of modern 'zoom' simulations of individual massive galaxies, while the volume contains ~20,000 resolved galaxies with M* > 10^7 solar masses. Herein we show first results from TNG50, focusing on galactic outflows driven by supernovae as well as supermassive black hole feedback. We find that the outflow mass loading is a non-monotonic function of galaxy stellar mass, turning over and rising rapidly above 10^10.5 solar masses due to the action of the central black hole (BH). Outflow velocity increases with stellar mass, and at fixed stellar mass, outflows are faster at higher redshift. The phase structure of galactic winds is complex, and we demonstrate that the TNG model can produce high velocity, multi-phase outflows which include cool, dense components. These outflows reach speeds in excess of 3000 km/s with an ejective, BH-driven origin. Critically, we show how the relative simplicity of model inputs (and scalings) at the injection scale produces complex behavior at galactic and halo scales. For example, despite isotropic wind launching, outflows exhibit natural collimation and an emergent bipolarity. We present a correlation between outflow velocity and offset from the star-forming main sequence -- galaxies above the SFMS drive faster outflows, although this correlation inverts at high mass with the onset of quenching, whereby low luminosity, slowly accreting, massive black holes drive the strongest outflows.
    • Correction
    • Cite
    • Save
    • Machine Reading By IdeaReader
    0
    References
    11
    Citations
    NaN
    KQI
    []