Spurious heating of stellar motions by dark matter particles in cosmological simulations of galaxy formation

Understand

We use two cosmological simulations to study the impact of spurious heating of stellar motions within simulated galaxies by dark matter (DM) particles.

• The simulations share the same numerical and subgrid parameters, but one used a factor of 7 more DM particles.
• Many galaxy properties are unaffected by spurious heating, including their masses, star formation histories, and the spatial distribution of their gaseous baryons.
• The distribution and kinematics of stellar and DM particles, however, are affected.