Efficient and Accurate Force Replay in Cosmological-baryonic Simulations
We construct time-evolving gravitational potential models for a Milky Way–mass galaxy from the FIRE-2 suite of cosmological-baryonic simulations using basis function expansions. These models capture the angular variation with spherical harmonics for the halo and azimuthal harmonics for the disk, and...
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IOP Publishing
2024-01-01
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| Series: | The Astrophysical Journal |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad88f0 |
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| author | Arpit Arora Robyn Sanderson Christopher Regan Nicolás Garavito-Camargo Emily Bregou Nondh Panithanpaisal Andrew Wetzel Emily C. Cunningham Sarah R. Loebman Adriana Dropulic Nora Shipp |
| author_facet | Arpit Arora Robyn Sanderson Christopher Regan Nicolás Garavito-Camargo Emily Bregou Nondh Panithanpaisal Andrew Wetzel Emily C. Cunningham Sarah R. Loebman Adriana Dropulic Nora Shipp |
| author_sort | Arpit Arora |
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| description | We construct time-evolving gravitational potential models for a Milky Way–mass galaxy from the FIRE-2 suite of cosmological-baryonic simulations using basis function expansions. These models capture the angular variation with spherical harmonics for the halo and azimuthal harmonics for the disk, and the radial or meridional plane variation with splines. We fit low-order expansions (four angular/harmonic terms) to the galaxy’s potential for each snapshot, spaced roughly 25 Myr apart, over the last 4 Gyr of its evolution, then extract the forces at discrete times and interpolate them between adjacent snapshots for forward orbit integration. Our method reconstructs the forces felt by simulation particles with high fidelity, with 95% of both stars and dark matter, outside of self-gravitating subhalos, exhibiting errors ≤4% in both the disk and the halo. Imposing symmetry on the model systematically increases these errors, particularly for disk particles, which show greater sensitivity to imposed symmetries. The majority of orbits recovered using the models exhibit positional errors ≤10% for 2–3 orbital periods, with higher errors for orbits that spend more time near the galactic center. Approximate integrals of motion are retrieved with high accuracy even with a larger potential sampling interval of 200 Myr. After 4 Gyr of integration, 43% and 70% of orbits have total energy and angular momentum errors within 10%, respectively. Consequently, there is higher reliability in orbital shape parameters such as pericenters and apocenters, with errors ∼10% even after multiple orbital periods. These techniques have diverse applications, including studying satellite disruption in cosmological contexts. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-cfd7239632004e39b609bfec0091b9ec |
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| issn | 1538-4357 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2024-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
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| series | The Astrophysical Journal |
| spelling | doaj-art-cfd7239632004e39b609bfec0091b9ec2025-08-20T01:54:21ZengIOP PublishingThe Astrophysical Journal1538-43572024-01-0197712310.3847/1538-4357/ad88f0Efficient and Accurate Force Replay in Cosmological-baryonic SimulationsArpit Arora0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8354-7356Robyn Sanderson1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3939-3297Christopher Regan2Nicolás Garavito-Camargo3https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7107-1744Emily Bregou4https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3792-8665Nondh Panithanpaisal5https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5214-8822Andrew Wetzel6https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0603-8942Emily C. Cunningham7https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6993-0826Sarah R. Loebman8https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3217-5967Adriana Dropulic9https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7352-6252Nora Shipp10https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2497-091XDepartment of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania , 209 S 33rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA ; arora125@sas.upenn.edu; Department of Astronomy, University of Washington , Seattle, WA 98195, USADepartment of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania , 209 S 33rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA ; arora125@sas.upenn.eduDepartment of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania , 209 S 33rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA ; arora125@sas.upenn.eduCenter for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute , 162 5th Ave, New York, NY 10010, USADepartment of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania , 209 S 33rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA ; arora125@sas.upenn.edu; Institut de Ciencies del Cosmos (ICCUB), Universitat de Barcelona (IEEC-UB) , Martí i Franques 1, E-08028 Barcelona, SpainDepartment of Physics & Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania , 209 S 33rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA ; arora125@sas.upenn.edu; Carnegie Observatories , 813 Santa Barbara St, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA; TAPIR, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USADepartment of Physics & Astronomy, University of California , Davis, CA 95616, USADepartment of Astronomy, Columbia University , 550 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027, USADepartment of Physics, University of California , Merced, 5200 Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343, USADepartment of Physics, Princeton University , Princeton, NJ 08544, USADepartment of Astronomy, University of Washington , Seattle, WA 98195, USA; McWilliams Center for Cosmology, Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USAWe construct time-evolving gravitational potential models for a Milky Way–mass galaxy from the FIRE-2 suite of cosmological-baryonic simulations using basis function expansions. These models capture the angular variation with spherical harmonics for the halo and azimuthal harmonics for the disk, and the radial or meridional plane variation with splines. We fit low-order expansions (four angular/harmonic terms) to the galaxy’s potential for each snapshot, spaced roughly 25 Myr apart, over the last 4 Gyr of its evolution, then extract the forces at discrete times and interpolate them between adjacent snapshots for forward orbit integration. Our method reconstructs the forces felt by simulation particles with high fidelity, with 95% of both stars and dark matter, outside of self-gravitating subhalos, exhibiting errors ≤4% in both the disk and the halo. Imposing symmetry on the model systematically increases these errors, particularly for disk particles, which show greater sensitivity to imposed symmetries. The majority of orbits recovered using the models exhibit positional errors ≤10% for 2–3 orbital periods, with higher errors for orbits that spend more time near the galactic center. Approximate integrals of motion are retrieved with high accuracy even with a larger potential sampling interval of 200 Myr. After 4 Gyr of integration, 43% and 70% of orbits have total energy and angular momentum errors within 10%, respectively. Consequently, there is higher reliability in orbital shape parameters such as pericenters and apocenters, with errors ∼10% even after multiple orbital periods. These techniques have diverse applications, including studying satellite disruption in cosmological contexts.https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad88f0Dark matterMilky Way evolutionGalaxy dynamics |
| spellingShingle | Arpit Arora Robyn Sanderson Christopher Regan Nicolás Garavito-Camargo Emily Bregou Nondh Panithanpaisal Andrew Wetzel Emily C. Cunningham Sarah R. Loebman Adriana Dropulic Nora Shipp Efficient and Accurate Force Replay in Cosmological-baryonic Simulations The Astrophysical Journal Dark matter Milky Way evolution Galaxy dynamics |
| title | Efficient and Accurate Force Replay in Cosmological-baryonic Simulations |
| title_full | Efficient and Accurate Force Replay in Cosmological-baryonic Simulations |
| title_fullStr | Efficient and Accurate Force Replay in Cosmological-baryonic Simulations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Efficient and Accurate Force Replay in Cosmological-baryonic Simulations |
| title_short | Efficient and Accurate Force Replay in Cosmological-baryonic Simulations |
| title_sort | efficient and accurate force replay in cosmological baryonic simulations |
| topic | Dark matter Milky Way evolution Galaxy dynamics |
| url | https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad88f0 |
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