6 research outputs found
The intricate Galaxy disk: velocity asymmetries in Gaia-TGAS
We use the Gaia-TGAS data to compare the transverse velocities in Galactic
longitude (coming from proper motions and parallaxes) in the Milky Way disk for
negative and positive longitudes as a function of distance. The transverse
velocities are strongly asymmetric and deviate significantly from the
expectations for an axisymmetric Galaxy. The value and sign of the asymmetry
changes at spatial scales of several tens of degrees in Galactic longitude and
about 0.5 kpc in distance. The asymmetry is statistically significant at 95%
confidence level for 57% of the region probed, which extends up to ~1.2 kpc. A
percentage of 24% of the region studied shows absolute differences at this
confidence level larger than 5 km/s and 7% larger than 10 km/s. The asymmetry
pattern shows mild variations in the vertical direction and with stellar type.
A first qualitative comparison with spiral arm models indicates that the arms
are unlikely to be the main source of the asymmetry. We briefly discuss
alternative origins. This is the first time that global all-sky asymmetries are
detected in the Milky Way kinematics, beyond the local neighbourhood, and with
a purely astrometric sample.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A Letter
THE AGORA HIGH-RESOLUTION GALAXY SIMULATIONS COMPARISON PROJECT. II. ISOLATED DISK TEST
Using an isolated Milky Way-mass galaxy simulation, we compare results from nine state-of-the-art gravito-hydrodynamics codes widely used in the numerical community. We utilize the infrastructure we have built for the AGORA High-resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project. This includes the common disk initial conditions, common physics models (e.g., radiative cooling and UV background by the standardized package Grackle) and common analysis toolkit yt, all of which are publicly available. Subgrid physics models such as Jeans pressure floor, star formation, supernova feedback energy, and metal production are carefully constrained across code platforms. With numerical accuracy that resolves the disk scale height, we find that the codes overall agree well with one another in many dimensions including: gas and stellar surface densities, rotation curves, velocity dispersions, density and temperature distribution functions, disk vertical heights, stellar clumps, star formation rates, and Kennicutt-Schmidt relations. Quantities such as velocity dispersions are very robust (agreement within a few tens of percent at all radii) while measures like newly formed stellar clump mass functions show more significant variation (difference by up to a factor of ∼3). Systematic differences exist, for example, between mesh-based and particle-based codes in the low-density region, and between more diffusive and less diffusive schemes in the high-density tail of the density distribution. Yet intrinsic code differences are generally small compared to the variations in numerical implementations of the common subgrid physics such as supernova feedback. Our experiment reassures that, if adequately designed in accordance with our proposed common parameters, results of a modern high-resolution galaxy formation simulation are more sensitive to input physics than to intrinsic differences in numerical schemes