Resolving Gas Dynamics in the Circumnuclear Region of a Disk Galaxy in a Cosmological Simulation

Understand

Using a hydrodynamic adaptive mesh refinement code, we simulate the growth and evolution of a galaxy, which could potentially host a supermassive black hole, within a cosmological volume.

• Reaching a dynamical range in excess of 10 million, the simulation follows the evolution of the gas structure from super-galactic scales all the way down to the outer edge of the accretion disk.
• Here, we focus on global instabilities in the self-gravitating, cold, turbulence-supported, molecular gas disk at the center of the model galaxy, which provide a natural mechanism for angular momentum transport down to sub-pc scales.
• The gas density profile follows a power-law scaling as r^-8/3, consistent with an analytic description of turbulence in a quasi-stationary circumnuclear disk.