ASTROPHYSICS

Molecular clouds form out of the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) within galactic disks and continuously accrete gas and interact with their surroundings as they evolve. Hence the evolution of turbulent, filamentary molecular clouds has to be modeled at the same time as the surrounding multiphase ISM. In the SILCC-ZOOM project, we simulate molecular cloud formation, the star formation within them, and their subsequent dispersal by stellar feedback on sub-parsec scales in 3D, AMR, MHD simulations with the FLASH code including self-gravity, radiative transfer, and a chemical network.

A European team of scientists from Cologne, Garching, Heidelberg, Prague and Zurich used GCS HPC resources to model representative regions of disk galaxies using adaptive, three-dimensional simulations at unprecedented resolution and with the necessary physical complexity to follow the full life-cycle of molecular clouds. They aim to provide a self-consistent answer as to how stellar feedback regulates the star formation efficiency of a galaxy, how molecular clouds are formed and destroyed, and how galactic outflows are driven.