Engineering topics

Smith, Britton D

Publications and source records attributed to Smith, Britton D.

4 records

DOE OSTI2012

DWARF GALAXY FORMATION WITH H{sub 2}-REGULATED STAR FORMATION

We describe cosmological galaxy formation simulations with the adaptive mesh refinement code Enzo that incorporate a star formation prescription regulated by the local abundance of molecular hydrogen. We show that this H{sub 2}-regulated prescription leads to a suppression of star formation in low-mass halos (M{sub h} {approx}< 10{sup 10} M{sub Sun }) at z > 4, alleviating some of the dwarf galaxy problems faced by theoretical galaxy formation models. H{sub 2} regulation modifies the efficiency of star formation of cold gas directly, rather than indirectly reducing the cold gas content with 'supernova feedback'. We determine the local H{sub 2} abundance in our most refined grid cells (76 proper parsec in size at z = 4) by applying the model of Krumholz, McKee, and Tumlinson, which is based on idealized one-dimensional radiative transfer calculations of H{sub 2} formation-dissociation balance in {approx}100 pc atomic-molecular complexes. Our H{sub 2}-regulated simulations are able to reproduce the empirical (albeit lower z) Kennicutt-Schmidt relation, including the low {Sigma}{sub gas} cutoff due to the transition from atomic to molecular phase and the metallicity dependence thereof, without the use of an explicit density threshold in our star formation prescription. We compare the evolution of the luminosity function, stellar mass density, and star formation rate density from our simulations to recent observational determinations of the same at z = 4-8 and find reasonable agreement between the two.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF SUPERNOVA DUST DESTRUCTION. II. METAL-ENRICHED EJECTA KNOTS

Following our previous work, we investigate through hydrodynamic simulations the destruction of newly formed dust grains by sputtering in the reverse shocks of supernova remnants. Using an idealized setup of a planar shock impacting a dense, spherical clump, we implant a population of Lagrangian particles into the clump to represent a distribution of dust grains in size and composition. We vary the relative velocity between the reverse shock and ejecta clump to explore the effects of shock heating and cloud compression. Because supernova ejecta will be metal-enriched, we consider gas metallicities from Z/Z{sub Sun} = 1 to 100 and their influence on the cooling properties of the cloud and the thermal sputtering rates of embedded dust grains. We post-process the simulation output to calculate grain sputtering for a variety of species and size distributions. In the metallicity regime considered in this paper, the balance between increased radiative cooling and increased grain erosion depends on the impact velocity of the reverse shock. For slow shocks (v{sub shock} {<=} 3000 km s{sup -1}), the amount of dust destruction is comparable across metallicities or in some cases is decreased with increased metallicity. For higher shock velocities (v{sub shock} {>=} 5000 km s{sup -1}), an increase in metallicity from Z/Z{sub Sun} = 10 to 100 can lead to an additional 24% destruction of the initial dust mass. While the total dust destruction varies widely across grain species and simulation parameters, our most extreme cases result in complete destruction for some grain species and only 44% dust mass survival for the most robust species. These survival rates are important in understanding how early supernovae contribute to the observed dust masses in high-redshift galaxies.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2011

GALAXY CLUSTER RADIO RELICS IN ADAPTIVE MESH REFINEMENT COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS: RELIC PROPERTIES AND SCALING RELATIONSHIPS

Cosmological shocks are a critical part of large-scale structure formation, and are responsible for heating the intracluster medium in galaxy clusters. In addition, they are capable of accelerating non-thermal electrons and protons. In this work, we focus on the acceleration of electrons at shock fronts, which is thought to be responsible for radio relics-extended radio features in the vicinity of merging galaxy clusters. By combining high-resolution adaptive mesh refinement/N-body cosmological simulations with an accurate shock-finding algorithm and a model for electron acceleration, we calculate the expected synchrotron emission resulting from cosmological structure formation. We produce synthetic radio maps of a large sample of galaxy clusters and present luminosity functions and scaling relationships. With upcoming long-wavelength radio telescopes, we expect to see an abundance of radio emission associated with merger shocks in the intracluster medium. By producing observationally motivated statistics, we provide predictions that can be compared with observations to further improve our understanding of magnetic fields and electron shock acceleration.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2011

YT: A Multi-Code Analysis Toolkit for Astrophysical Simulation Data

The analysis of complex multiphysics astrophysical simulations presents a unique and rapidly growing set of challenges: reproducibility, parallelization, and vast increases in data size and complexity chief among them. In order to meet these challenges, and in order to open up new avenues for collaboration between users of multiple simulation platforms, we present yt (available at http://yt.enzotools.org/) an open source, community-developed astrophysical analysis and visualization toolkit. Analysis and visualization with yt are oriented around physically relevant quantities rather than quantities native to astrophysical simulation codes. While originally designed for handling Enzo's structure adaptive mesh refinement data, yt has been extended to work with several different simulation methods and simulation codes including Orion, RAMSES, and FLASH. We report on its methods for reading, handling, and visualizing data, including projections, multivariate volume rendering, multi-dimensional histograms, halo finding, light cone generation, and topologically connected isocontour identification. Furthermore, we discuss the underlying algorithms yt uses for processing and visualizing data, and its mechanisms for parallelization of analysis tasks.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗