The AGORA High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project
Creators: name: Kim, Ji-hoon
name: Abel, Tom
name: Agertz, Oscar
name: Bryan, Greg L.
name: Ceverino, Daniel
name: Christensen, Charlotte
name: Conroy, Charlie
name: Dekel, Avishai
name: Gnedin, Nickolay Y.
name: Goldbaum, Nathan J.
name: Guedes, Javiera
name: Hahn, Oliver
name: Hobbs, Alexander
name: Hopkins, Philip F.
name: Hummels, Cameron B.
name: Iannuzzi, Francesca
name: Keres, Dusan
name: Klypin, Anatoly
name: Kravtsov, Andrey V.
name: Krumholz, Mark R.
name: Kuhlen, Michael
name: Leitner, Samuel N.
name: Madau, Piero
name: Mayer, Lucio
name: Moody, Christopher E.
name: Nagamine, Kentaro
name: Norman, Michael L.
name: Oñorbe, Jose
name: O'Shea, Brian W.
name: Pillepich, Annalisa
name: Primack, Joel R.
name: Quinn, Thomas
name: Read, Justin I.
name: Robertson, Brant E.
name: Rocha, Miguel
name: Rudd, Douglas H.
name: Shen, Sijing
name: Smith, Britton D.
name: Szalay, Alexander S.
name: Teyssier, Romain
name: Thompson, Robert
name: Todoroki, Keita
name: Turk, Matthew J.
name: Wadsley, James W.
name: Wise, John H.
name: Zolotov, Adi
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)
subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We introduce the AGORA project, a comprehensive numerical study of well-resolved galaxies within the LCDM 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 baryons in and out of 8 galaxies with halo masses M_vir ~= 1e10, 1e11, 1e12, and 1e13 Msun at z=0 and two different ("violent" and "quiescent") assembly histories. The numerical techniques and implementations used in this project include the smoothed particle hydrodynamics codes GADGET and GASOLINE, and the adaptive mesh refinement codes ART, ENZO, and RAMSES. The codes will share common initial conditions and common astrophysics packages including UV background, metal-dependent radiative cooling, metal and energy yields of supernovae, and stellar initial mass function. These are described in detail in the present paper. Subgrid star formation and feedback prescriptions will be tuned to provide a realistic interstellar and circumgalactic medium using a non-cosmological disk galaxy simulation. Cosmological runs will be systematically compared with each other using a common analysis toolkit, and validated against observations to verify that the solutions are robust - i.e., that the astrophysical assumptions are responsible for any success, rather than artifacts of particular implementations. The goals of the AGORA project are, broadly speaking, to raise the realism and predictive power of galaxy simulations and the understanding of the feedback processes that regulate galaxy "metabolism." The proof-of-concept dark matter-only test of the formation of a galactic halo with a z=0 mass of M_vir ~= 1.7e11 Msun by 9 different versions of the participating codes is also presented to validate the infrastructure of the project.
description: 21 pages, 6 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement, Image resolution greatly reduced, High-resolution version of this article and more information about the AGORA Project including the science goals of the 13 Working Groups are available at http://www.AGORAsimulations.org/ and at http://sites.google.com/site/santacruzcomparisonproject/details/