COLLOQUIUM: Rainer Weinberger, AIP

Modelling galaxy formation in a cosmological context – recent progress and challenges

Galaxies in the Universe form as the product of cosmological structure formation. Gas falls into halos, heats up, but, unlike dark matter, dissipates its energy radiatively, allowing for further collapse and ultimately the formation of stars. This collapse turns out to be relatively inefficient due to the interaction between the cooling gas and heating via feedback effects from already formed stars and active galactic nuclei. Understanding this cooling-heating cycle though cosmic time and environment is at the heart of current galaxy formation research and critical to understand the properties of galaxies. Using the IllustrisTNG project as an example, I will illustrate how these processes can be modelled in modern computer simulations. I will highlight a few insights we have gained about galaxy formation analyzing the simulations. Subsequently, I will discuss aspects in which our modelling is still inadequate, focusing on the evolution of massive black holes and on the multi-phase nature of galactic gas, and present ways in which they can be improved in future simulations.

Talk in presence and via Zoom:

https://uni-hamburg.zoom.us/j/66006535328?pwd=aGkrSjJIYmZjK0VpYlpGL0ZrdHg2UT09