Yu Feng
(BCCP)
Milky way-mass disk galaxies in a z=8 universe
The size of large scale cosmological simulations have steadily increased
with time, catching up with the computing power of state-of-art
super-computing facilities. In this talk I will present the first
results on high-redshift galaxy morphology from the BlueTides
simulation, a hydrodynamic simulation of the early universe up to z=8
with nearly 700 billion particles in a 400 Mpc/h per side box. BlueTides
resolves galaxy formation in a volume that is several hundred times
bigger than the footprint of the largest Hubble Ultra Deep Field survey
(BoRG) at this redshift. The simulation predicts the existence of a
population of disk galaxies with masses comparable to our Milky-way
galaxy. Upcoming observations (e.g. with WFIRST) will be capable of
observing many such galaxies, and open up a new frontier in the physics
of high-redshift galaxy formation.