Zooming in on the circumgalactic medium with GIBLE: Cloud-scale simulations with cosmological initial conditions
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| Autores principales: | , , , |
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| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866911472869703680 |
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| author | Ramesh, Rahul Nelson, Dylan Fielding, Drummond Brüggen, Marcus |
| author_facet | Ramesh, Rahul Nelson, Dylan Fielding, Drummond Brüggen, Marcus |
| contents | We conduct simulations of $\sim$kpc-scale cool clouds in the circumgalactic medium (CGM), using initial conditions sampled from a highly resolved cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical zoom-in of a Milky Way-like galaxy. We select ten distinct cold clouds with masses of $m_{\rm{cloud}}$ $\sim$ $10^{4.5-5}$ M$_\odot$, originally resolved at a mass resolution of $m_{\rm{gas}}$ $\sim$ $200$ M$_\odot$. To further resolve small-scale features and physics, we implement a targeted refinement scheme within spherical regions co-moving with each cloud, thereby boosting the local mass resolution by a factor of 1000, reaching $m_{\rm{gas}}$ $\sim$ $0.2$ M$_\odot$ (spatial resolution, $r_{\rm{gas,cloud}}$ $\sim$ $O(\rm{pc})$). The selected clouds have diverse properties, across a broad parameter space, resulting in heterogeneous evolution. For the clouds we study, radiative cooling is the dominant physical process enabling cloud survival, while magnetic fields play a comparatively smaller role. The motion of these clouds is governed not only by drag forces that decelerate them, but also by acceleration from momentum exchange with the complex background velocity field, which can cause them to move faster than ballistic projectiles set by their initial velocities. Our results suggest that the non-trivial details of realistic cosmological initial conditions -- specifically the complex density, temperature, and velocity fields -- may play an important role in subsequent cloud evolution, and that sampling the output of an existing large-scale simulation provides a self-consistent approach to capture these effects without ad hoc assumptions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_23416 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Zooming in on the circumgalactic medium with GIBLE: Cloud-scale simulations with cosmological initial conditions Ramesh, Rahul Nelson, Dylan Fielding, Drummond Brüggen, Marcus Astrophysics of Galaxies Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics We conduct simulations of $\sim$kpc-scale cool clouds in the circumgalactic medium (CGM), using initial conditions sampled from a highly resolved cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical zoom-in of a Milky Way-like galaxy. We select ten distinct cold clouds with masses of $m_{\rm{cloud}}$ $\sim$ $10^{4.5-5}$ M$_\odot$, originally resolved at a mass resolution of $m_{\rm{gas}}$ $\sim$ $200$ M$_\odot$. To further resolve small-scale features and physics, we implement a targeted refinement scheme within spherical regions co-moving with each cloud, thereby boosting the local mass resolution by a factor of 1000, reaching $m_{\rm{gas}}$ $\sim$ $0.2$ M$_\odot$ (spatial resolution, $r_{\rm{gas,cloud}}$ $\sim$ $O(\rm{pc})$). The selected clouds have diverse properties, across a broad parameter space, resulting in heterogeneous evolution. For the clouds we study, radiative cooling is the dominant physical process enabling cloud survival, while magnetic fields play a comparatively smaller role. The motion of these clouds is governed not only by drag forces that decelerate them, but also by acceleration from momentum exchange with the complex background velocity field, which can cause them to move faster than ballistic projectiles set by their initial velocities. Our results suggest that the non-trivial details of realistic cosmological initial conditions -- specifically the complex density, temperature, and velocity fields -- may play an important role in subsequent cloud evolution, and that sampling the output of an existing large-scale simulation provides a self-consistent approach to capture these effects without ad hoc assumptions. |
| title | Zooming in on the circumgalactic medium with GIBLE: Cloud-scale simulations with cosmological initial conditions |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.23416 |