Simulating galactic outflows with kinetic supernova feedback

Understand

Feedback from star formation is thought to play a key role in the formation and evolution of galaxies, but its implementation in cosmological simulations is currently hampered by a lack of numerical resolution.

• We present and test a sub-grid recipe to model feedback from massive stars in cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations.
• The energy is distributed in kinetic form among the gas particles surrounding recently formed stars.
• The impact of the feedback is studied using a suite of high-resolution simulations of isolated disc galaxies embedded in dark halos with total mass 10^{10} and 10^{12} Msol/h.