Numerically modeling the evolution of dust grains in galaxy formation simulations

In this thesis, I present the development of various models for dust physics suited for galaxy formation simulations. I begin by introducing a model to evolve the spatial distribution of dust in galaxies, with dust treated as a passive scalar advected according to hydrodynamic flow. This model accounts for processes that affect the interstellar dust budget, like stellar dust production, accretion of gas-phase metals, and supernova-driven destruction. Using the moving-mesh hydrodynamics code arepo, I perform cosmological zoom-in simulations of Milky Way-sized galaxies to study the evolution of interstellar dust. Predictions from this model compare favorably to a number of observed low-redshift dust scaling relations and suggest that galactic dust-to-gas ratios can strongly increase with cosmic time. I also present simulations of uniformly sampled cosmological volumes to analyze the behavior of dust statistics on large scales.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• McKinnon, Ryan Michael.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Mark Vogelsberger.

• Physics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123346

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123346