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Astro Seminar

The Cloud Factory: resolving star formation in its galactic context

Speaker: Rowan Smith (Manchester)
Date: Thursday 18 March 2021
Time: 14:00
Venue: Zoom

I present suites of simulations that resolve individual molecular clouds down to ~0.1 pc scales while they are embedded within a larger galaxy simulation. This enables us to study fragmentation and star formation within the resolved clouds in their true galactic context and is a perfect point of comparison to ISM observations in the ALMA era. Our Arepo simulations include a time-dependent chemical model, gas self-gravity, the ISRF and gas self-shielding, magnetic fields, sink particles, and supernova feedback. Using a Milky Way analogue and dwarf galaxy simulations of various metallicities as our base, we turn on these effects step-by-step in a series of simulations to create a laboratory for testing the physics of the ISM and star formation from kpc scales to cold cores.