activity
20162025
most citedFIRE-2 Simulations: Physics versus Numerics in Galaxy Formation

1.1k citations · 3.2k across the 36 of their papers we have counts for

collaborators

36 papers

astro-ph.GA2025★ 1 cited

Second public data release of the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of galaxy formation

Andrew Wetzel, Jenna Samuel, Pratik J. Gandhi +34

We describe the second data release (DR2) of the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of galaxy formation, from the Feedback In Realistic Environments (FIRE) project, available…

cs.DL2025

Density, asymmetry and citation dynamics in scientific literature

Nathaniel Imel, Zachary Hafen

Scientific behavior is often characterized by a tension between building upon established knowledge and introducing novel ideas. Here, we investigate whether this tension is reflec…

astro-ph.GA2023★ 10 cited

Great Balls of FIRE III: Modeling Black Hole Mergers from Massive Star Clusters in Simulations of Galaxies

Tristan Bruel, Carl L. Rodriguez, Astrid Lamberts +3

After the nearly hundred gravitational-wave detections reported by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration, the question of the cosmological origin of merging binary black holes (BBHs)…

astro-ph.GA2023★ 4 cited

Accretion onto disk galaxies via hot and rotating CGM inflows

Jonathan Stern, Drummond Fielding, Zachary Hafen +5

Observed accretion rates onto the Milky-Way and other local spirals fall short of that required to sustain star formation for cosmological timescales. A potential avenue for this u…

astro-ph.GA2023★ 4 cited

On the Metallicities and Kinematics of the Circumgalactic Media of Damped Ly Systems at

Stephanie M. Urbano Stawinski, Kate H. R. Rubin, J. Xavier Prochaska +7

We use medium- and high-resolution spectroscopy of close pairs of quasars to analyze the circumgalactic medium (CGM) surrounding 32 damped Ly absorption systems (DLAs). The prim…

astro-ph.GA2023

The Halo21 Absorption Modeling Challenge: Lessons From "Observing" Synthetic Circumgalactic Absorption Spectra

Zachary Hafen, Sameer, Cameron Hummels +7

In the Halo21 absorption modeling challenge we generated synthetic absorption spectra of the circumgalactic medium (CGM), and attempted to estimate the metallicity, temperature, an…

astro-ph.GA2023★ 3 cited

The imprint of bursty star formation on alpha-element abundance patterns in Milky Way-like galaxies

Hanna Parul, Jeremy Bailin, Andrew Wetzel +5

Milky Way-mass galaxies in the FIRE-2 simulations demonstrate two main modes of star formation. At high redshifts star formation occurs in a series of short and intense bursts, whi…

astro-ph.GA2023★ 95 cited

What Causes The Formation of Disks and End of Bursty Star Formation?

Philip F. Hopkins, Alexander B. Gurvich, Xuejian Shen +17

As they grow, galaxies can transition from irregular/spheroidal with 'bursty' star formation histories (SFHs), to disky with smooth SFHs. But even in simulations, the direct physic…

astro-ph.GA2022★ 1 cited

A unified model for the co-evolution of galaxies and their circumgalactic medium: the relative roles of turbulence and atomic cooling physics

Viraj Pandya, Drummond B. Fielding, Greg L. Bryan +7

The circumgalactic medium (CGM) plays a pivotal role in regulating gas flows around galaxies and thus shapes their evolution. However, the details of how galaxies and their CGM co-…

astro-ph.GA2022★ 55 cited

Born this way: thin disc, thick disc, and isotropic spheroid formation in FIRE-2 Milky-Way-mass galaxy simulations

Sijie Yu, James S. Bullock, Alexander B. Gurvich +7

We investigate the formation of Milky-Way-mass galaxies using FIRE-2 LCDM cosmological zoom-in simulations by studying the orbital evolution of stars formed in the main progenitor…

astro-ph.GA2022★ 71 cited

Rapid disc settling and the transition from bursty to steady star formation in Milky Way-mass galaxies

Alexander B. Gurvich, Jonathan Stern, Claude-André Faucher-Giguère +6

Recent observations and simulations indicate substantial evolution in the properties of galaxies with time, wherein rotationally-supported and steady thin discs (like those frequen…

astro-ph.GA2022★ 37 cited

Great Balls of FIRE II: The evolution and destruction of star clusters across cosmic time in a Milky Way-mass galaxy

Carl L. Rodriguez, Zachary Hafen, Michael Y. Grudić +4

The current generation of galaxy simulations can resolve individual giant molecular clouds, the progenitors of dense star clusters. But the evolutionary fate of these young massive…

astro-ph.GA2022★ 43 cited

Great Balls of FIRE I: The formation of star clusters across cosmic time in a Milky Way-mass galaxy

Michael Y. Grudić, Zachary Hafen, Carl L. Rodriguez +5

The properties of young star clusters formed within a galaxy are thought to vary in different interstellar medium (ISM) conditions, but the details of this mapping from galactic to…

astro-ph.GA2022★ 70 cited

Galaxies lacking dark matter produced by close encounters in a cosmological simulation

Jorge Moreno, Shany Danieli, James S. Bullock +18

The standard cold dark matter plus cosmological constant model predicts that galaxies form within dark-matter haloes, and that low-mass galaxies are more dark-matter dominated than…

astro-ph.GA2022★ 137 cited

Public data release of the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of galaxy formation

Andrew Wetzel, Christopher C. Hayward, Robyn E. Sanderson +23

We describe a public data release of the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of galaxy formation, available at http://flathub.flatironinstitute.org/fire, from the Feedback In R…

astro-ph.GA2022★ 95 cited

Hot-mode accretion and the physics of thin-disk galaxy formation

Zachary Hafen, Jonathan Stern, James Bullock +16

We use FIRE simulations to study disk formation in z~0, Milky Way-mass galaxies, and conclude that a key ingredient for the formation of thin stellar disks is the ability for accre…

astro-ph.GA2021★ 31 cited

Amplified J-factors in the Galactic Center for velocity-dependent darkmatter annihilation in FIRE simulations

Daniel McKeown, James S. Bullock, Francisco J. Mercado +6

We use FIRE-2 zoom cosmological simulations of Milky Way size galaxy halos to calculate astrophysical J-factors for dark matter annihilation and indirect detection studies. In addi…

astro-ph.GA2021★ 39 cited

Neutral CGM as damped Lyα absorbers at high redshift

Jonathan Stern, Amiel Sternberg, Claude-André Faucher-Giguère +8

Recent searches for the hosts of high-redshift () damped Ly absorbers (DLAs) have detected bright galaxies at distances of tens of kpc from the DLA. Using the FIRE-2 c…

astro-ph.GA2021★ 72 cited

The bursty origin of the Milky Way thick disc

Sijie Yu, James S. Bullock, Courtney Klein +11

We investigate thin and thick stellar disc formation in Milky-Way-mass galaxies using twelve FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations. All simulated galaxies experience an early per…

astro-ph.GA2021★ 152 cited

Characterizing mass, momentum, energy and metal outflow rates of multi-phase galactic winds in the FIRE-2 cosmological simulations

Viraj Pandya, Drummond B. Fielding, Daniel Anglés-Alcázar +14

We characterize mass, momentum, energy and metal outflow rates of multi-phase galactic winds in a suite of FIRE-2 cosmological "zoom-in" simulations from the Feedback in Realistic…

astro-ph.GA2020★ 22 cited

First Co-spatial Comparison of Stellar, Neutral-, and Ionized-gas Metallicities in a metal-rich galaxy: M83

Svea Hernandez, Alessandra Aloisi, Bethan L. James +14

We carry out a comparative analysis of the metallicities from the stellar, neutral-gas, and ionized-gas components in the metal-rich spiral galaxy M83. We analyze spectroscopic obs…

astro-ph.GA2020★ 17 cited

Probing the CGM of Low-redshift Dwarf Galaxies Using FIRE Simulations

Fei Li, Mubdi Rahman, Norman Murray +7

Observations of UV metal absorption lines have provided insight into the structure and composition of the circumgalactic medium (CGM) around galaxies. We compare these observations…

astro-ph.GA2020★ 133 cited

Virialization of the inner CGM in the FIRE simulations and implications for galaxy discs, star formation and feedback

Jonathan Stern, Claude-André Faucher-Giguère, Drummond Fielding +13

We use the FIRE-2 cosmological simulations to study the formation of a quasi-static, virial-temperature gas phase in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) at redshifts 0<z<5, and how the…

astro-ph.GA2020★ 31 cited

Thermal Instability in the CGM of Galaxies: Testing "Precipitation" Models with the FIRE Simulations

Clarke J. Esmerian, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Zachary Hafen +5

We examine the thermodynamic state and cooling of the low- Circum-Galactic Medium (CGM) in five FIRE-2 galaxy formation simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies. We find that the…