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This document describes the general process of setting up, running, and analysing disc galaxy simulations using the freely available program Phantom of RAMSES (PoR). This implements Milgromian Dynamics (MOND) with a patch to the RAMSES grid-based $N$-body and hydrodynamical code that uses adaptive mesh refinement. We discuss the procedure of setting up isolated and interacting disc galaxy initial conditions for PoR, running the simulations, and analysing the results. This manual also concisely documents all previously developed MOND simulation codes and the results obtained with them.
DDSCAT 7.3 is an open-source Fortran-90 software package applying the discrete dipole approximation to calculate scattering and absorption of electromagnetic waves by targets with arbitrary geometries and complex refractive index. The targets may be isolated entities (e.g., dust particles), but may also be 1-d or 2-d periodic arrays of target unit cells, allowing calculation of absorption, scattering, and electric fields around arrays of nanostructures. The theory of the DDA and its implementation in DDSCAT is presented in Draine (1988) and Draine & Flatau (1994), and its extension to periodic structures in Draine & Flatau (2008), and efficient near-field calculations in Flatau & Draine (2012). DDSCAT 7.3 includes support for MPI, OpenMP, and the Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL). DDSCAT supports calculations for a variety of target geometries. Target materials may be both inhomogeneous and anisotropic. It is straightforward for the user to import arbitrary target geometries into the code. DDSCAT automatically calculates total cross sections for absorption and scattering and selected elements of the Mueller scattering intensity matrix for user-specified scattering directions. DDSCAT 7.3 can efficiently calculate E and B throughout a user-specified volume containing the target. This User Guide explains how to use DDSCAT 7.3 to carry out electromagnetic scattering calculations, including use of DDPOSTPROCESS, a Fortran-90 code to perform calculations with E and B at user-selected locations near the target. A number of changes have been made since the last release, DDSCAT 7.2 .
We present the McMaster Unbiased Galaxy Simulations (MUGS), the first 9 galaxies of an unbiased selection ranging in total mass from 5$times10^{11}$ M$_odot$ to 2$times10^{12}$ M$_odot$ simulated using n-body smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) at high resolution. The simulations include a treatment of low temperature metal cooling, UV background radiation, star formation, and physically motivated stellar feedback. Mock images of the simulations show that the simulations lie within the observed range of relations such as that between color and magnitude and that between brightness and circular velocity (Tully-Fisher). The greatest discrepancy between the simulated galaxies and observed galaxies is the high concentration of material at the center of the galaxies as represented by the centrally peaked rotation curves and the high bulge-to-total ratios of the simulations determined both kinematically and photometrically. This central concentration represents the excess of low angular momentum material that long has plagued morphological studies of simulated galaxies and suggests that higher resolutions and a more accurate description of feedback will be required to simulate more realistic galaxies. Even with the excess central mass concentrations, the simulations suggest the important role merger history and halo spin play in the formation of disks.
We study the kinematics of stars in clusters undergoing gas expulsion in standard Newtonian dynamics and also in Milgromian dynamics (MOND). Gas expulsion can explain the observed line-of-sight (LoS) velocity dispersion profile of NGC 2419 in Newtonian dynamics. For a given star formation efficiency (SFE), the shapes of the velocity dispersion profiles, which are normalised by the velocity dispersion at the projected half-mass radius, are almost indistinguishable for different SFE models in Newtonian dynamics. The velocity dispersion of a star cluster in the outer halo of a galaxy can indeed have a strong radial anisotropy in Newtonian dynamics after gas expulsion. MOND displays several different properties from Newtonian dynamics. In particular, the slope of the central velocity dispersion profile is less steep in MOND for the same SFE. Moreover, for a given SFE, more massive embedded cluster models result in more rapidly declining central velocity dispersion profiles for the final star clusters, while less massive embedded cluster models lead to flatter velocity dispersion profiles for the final products. The onset of the radial-orbit instability in post-gas-expulsion MOND models is discussed. SFEs as low as a few percent, typical of molecular clouds, lead to surviving ultra-diffuse objects. Gas expulsion alone is unlikely the physical mechanism for the observed velocity dispersion profile of NGC 2419 in MOND.
The softened point mass model is commonly used in simulations of gaseous discs including self-gravity while the value of associated length lambda remains, to some degree, controversial. This ``parameter is however fully constrained when, in a discretized disc, all fluid cells are demanded to obey Newtons law. We examine the topology of solutions in this context, focusing on cylindrical cells more or less vertically elongated. We find that not only the nominal length depends critically on the cells shape (curvature, radial extension, height), but it is either a real or an imaginary number. Setting lambda as a fraction of the local disc thickness -- as usually done -- is indeed not the optimal choice. We then propose a novel prescription valid irrespective of the disc properties and grid spacings. The benefit, which amounts to 2-3 more digits typically, is illustrated in a few concrete cases. A detailed mathematical analysis is in progress.
Simulations of galaxy formation follow the gravitational and hydrodynamical interactions between gas, stars and dark matter through cosmic time. The huge dynamic range of such calculations severely limits strong scaling behaviour of the community codes in use, with load-imbalance, cache inefficiencies and poor vectorisation limiting performance. The new swift code exploits task-based parallelism designed for many-core compute nodes interacting via MPI using asynchronous communication to improve speed and scaling. A graph-based domain decomposition schedules interdependent tasks over available resources. Strong scaling tests on realistic particle distributions yield excellent parallel efficiency, and efficient cache usage provides a large speed-up compared to current codes even on a single core. SWIFT is designed to be easy to use by shielding the astronomer from computational details such as the construction of the tasks or MPI communication. The techniques and algorithms used in SWIFT may benefit other computational physics areas as well, for example that of compressible hydrodynamics. For details of this open-source project, see www.swiftsim.com