Rahul Ramesh   (India)

rahul.ramesh @ stud.uni-heidelberg.de

Deciphering galaxy evolution through the baryon cycle and circumgalactic medium in cosmological simulations 

Hydrodynamical simulations, as well as astronomical observations, have recently revealed how the circumgalactic medium (CGM) plays a vital role in the evolution of galaxies through the ‘baryon cycle’. The CGM not only harbours gas that has been previously ejected from the galaxy through feedback processes, as well as ‘recycling’ or fountain flows that circulate in the halo, it is also the region through which accreting gas from larger scales must pass through. As a result, the CGM is a multi-scale, multi-phase gaseous reservoir regulated by the complex interplay of many physical processes. In this project, we initially aim to use the TNG50 simulation of the IllustrisTNG project (https://www.tng-project.org) to study the CGM of Milky Way-like galaxies: its physical properties and structure, as well as the occurrence and origin of small, cold clouds of gas that form in the CGM, similar to the high velocity clouds (HVCs) observed in the gaseous halo of our Milky Way. Future steps will develop new numerical methods and techniques in order to run simulations beyond IllustrisTNG, in order to resolve the structure and physics of the circumgalactic medium in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation.

Supervisor:    Dylan Nelson  (ITA)