Probing the Fossils of the Local Group using Petascale Adaptive Mesh Galaxy Simulations

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The goal of this project is to unlock fundamental breakthroughs in galaxy formation with large-scale numerical simulations on the Blue Waters supercomputer. These simulations will resolve the smallest building blocks of galaxies and their star formation histories, allowing for direct measurements of the consequences of the numerical calculations. The complexity of the included physics will lead to the creation of rich data sets that address many key issues relating to star formation histories, chemical evolution, early galaxy assembly, and the observable properties of galaxies. Furthermore, the simulation data produced during the course of this project, as well as a wide range of other data products, will be made publicly available for use by the broader astrophysical community.The project will answer several pressing, observational motivated questions about low-mass and metal-poor galaxies by using the Blue Waters supercomputer to perform a suite of sophisticated, high dynamic range adaptive mesh simulations of cosmological structure formation. These simulations will probe the early history of the Local Group of galaxies in great detail, and will directly connect the largest of these early galaxies to their relics, which can be found among the present-day Local Group dwarf galaxies. The project will address four specific questions about galaxy formation: 1. What are the key physical mechanisms that control galaxy formation at the earliest epochs, and how do they differ from the ones in larger galaxies forming at later times? 2. If the seeds of supermassive black holes form from the first generation of stars, how do they grow over the first billion years of cosmic evolution? 3. What are the physical characteristics of the remnants of early galaxy formation in the Local Group, and what information about their formation is retained by the stellar populations of those galaxies? 4. What are the unique observational signatures of the earliest galaxies, both at high redshift and the present day? The team contains experts in galaxy formation and high performance computing, as well as the use of a sophisticated numerical tool, specifically the Enzo code. The Enzo code that has been demonstrated to scale and perform well on the Blue Waters supercomputer. The project will apply the simulations to the interpretation of measurements of both local and distant galaxies from current astronomical surveys, and to motivate future observational campaigns.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.