The origin of galactic disks

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Burkert
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2005 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5449790

• Final Report Year: 2012

Final Report Abstract

We have investigated whether cosmological simulations of gas infall into dark matter halos and the formation of galactic disks are affected by numerical problems. We demonstrate that the SPH (smoothed particle hydrodynamics) method has strong caveats in correctly integrating the hydrodynamical equations in the case of a multi-phase interstellar medium with strong density contrasts. We conclude that more sophisticated numerical methods and codes are required in order to simulate the formation of galactic disks reliably.

Publications

• Hydrodynamcial Instabilities & The Trace of Dark Energy within the CMB
  Junk, V.
  
• (2010). Modelling shear flows with smoothed particle hydrodynamics and grid-based methods. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 407(3), 1933-1945
  Junk, V. Walch, S. Heitsch F. Schartmann M. Burkert A. & Price D.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17039.x)