The AGORA High-resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project. III: Cosmological zoom-in simulation of a Milky Way-mass halo

Understand

We present a suite of high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations to $z=4$ of a $10^{12}\,{\rm M}_{\odot}$ halo at $z=0$, obtained using seven contemporary astrophysical simulation codes widely used in the numerical galaxy formation community.

• Physics prescriptions for gas cooling, heating, and star formation, are similar to the ones used in our previous {\it AGORA} disk comparison but now account for the effects of cosmological processes.
• In this work, we introduce the most careful comparison yet of galaxy formation simulations run by different code groups, together with a series of four calibration steps each of which is designed to reduce the number of tunable simulation parameters adopted in the final run.
• After all the participating code groups successfully completed the calibration steps, we reach a suite of cosmological simulations with similar mass assembly histories down to $z=4$.