The E-MOSAICS project: tracing galaxy formation and assembly with the age-metallicity distribution of globular clusters

Understand

We present 25 cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies in the `MOdelling Star cluster population Assembly In Cosmological Simulations within EAGLE' (E-MOSAICS) project.

• E-MOSAICS couples a detailed physical model for the formation, evolution, and disruption of star clusters to the EAGLE galaxy formation simulations.
• This enables following the co-formation and co-evolution of galaxies and their star cluster populations, thus realising the long-standing promise of using globular clusters (GCs) as tracers of galaxy formation and assembly.
• The simulations show that the age-metallicity distributions of GC populations exhibit strong galaxy-to-galaxy variations, resulting from differences in their evolutionary histories.