Chemical enrichment in cosmological, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations

Understand

(Abridged) We present an implementation of stellar evolution and chemical feedback for smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations.

• We consider the timed release of individual elements by both massive (Type II supernovae and stellar winds) and intermediate mass stars (Type Ia supernovae and asymptotic giant branch stars).
• We illustrate the results of our method using a suite of cosmological simulations that include new prescriptions for radiative cooling, star formation, and galactic winds.
• Radiative cooling is implemented element-by-element, in the presence of an ionizing radiation background, and we track all 11 elements that contribute significantly to the radiative cooling.