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Introducing the Illustris Project: Simulating the coevolution of dark and visible matter in the Universe

10 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

10 Pith papers citing it
abstract

We introduce the Illustris Project, a series of large-scale hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation. The highest resolution simulation, Illustris-1, covers a volume of $(106.5\,{\rm Mpc})^3$, has a dark mass resolution of ${6.26 \times 10^{6}\,{\rm M}_\odot}$, and an initial baryonic matter mass resolution of ${1.26 \times 10^{6}\,{\rm M}_\odot}$. At $z=0$ gravitational forces are softened on scales of $710\,{\rm pc}$, and the smallest hydrodynamical gas cells have an extent of $48\,{\rm pc}$. We follow the dynamical evolution of $2\times 1820^3$ resolution elements and in addition passively evolve $1820^3$ Monte Carlo tracer particles reaching a total particle count of more than $18$ billion. The galaxy formation model includes: primordial and metal-line cooling with self-shielding corrections, stellar evolution, stellar feedback, gas recycling, chemical enrichment, supermassive black hole growth, and feedback from active galactic nuclei. At $z=0$ our simulation volume contains about $40,000$ well-resolved galaxies covering a diverse range of morphologies and colours including early-type, late-type and irregular galaxies. The simulation reproduces reasonably well the cosmic star formation rate density, the galaxy luminosity function, and baryon conversion efficiency at $z=0$. It also qualitatively captures the impact of galaxy environment on the red fractions of galaxies. The internal velocity structure of selected well-resolved disk galaxies obeys the stellar and baryonic Tully-Fisher relation together with flat circular velocity curves. In the well-resolved regime the simulation reproduces the observed mix of early-type and late-type galaxies. Our model predicts a halo mass dependent impact of baryonic effects on the halo mass function and the masses of haloes caused by feedback from supernova and active galactic nuclei.

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representative citing papers

The limits of feedback from active galactic nuclei

astro-ph.GA · 2026-05-15 · unverdicted · novelty 6.0

AGN feedback creates a mass-independent entropy ceiling that allows outflows to escape halos only below M_200m = 10^13.7 M_sun, explaining depleted gas in groups versus near-cosmic fractions in clusters.

Probing the faint-end of simulated galaxy counts at z>3

astro-ph.CO · 2026-05-15 · conditional · novelty 5.0

Hydrodynamical simulations underproduce faint compact galaxies at z>3 relative to CANDELS data, with the mismatch persisting after completeness corrections and pointing to deficiencies in star formation and feedback modeling.

The Lumina Project: CMB Optical Depth Fluctuations from Patchy Reionization

astro-ph.CO · 2026-05-18 · unverdicted · novelty 4.0

The Lumina simulation shows that explicit light-cone integrations produce a CMB optical depth 7% higher than volume-weighted ionization histories, with the excess accumulating near redshift 8 and mass-weighted estimates capturing most of the difference.

Simulation budgeting for hybrid effective field theories

astro-ph.CO · 2025-10-15 · unverdicted · novelty 4.0

Forecasts that under 225 N-body simulations suffice for 1-2% accurate HEFT emulators over wide w0waCDM + m_nu parameter space, with as few as 80 for restricted volumes.

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