Abstract
We present the first hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation using the
new moving mesh code AREPO and compare the results with equivalent GADGET
simulations based on the SPH technique. Both codes use an identical Tree-PM
gravity solver and include the same sub-resolution physics for the treatment of
star formation, but employ a completely different method to solve the inviscid
Euler equations. This allows us to cleanly assess the impact of hydro-solver
uncertainties on the results of cosmological studies of galaxy formation. In
this paper, we focus on predictions for global baryon statistics, such as the
cosmic star formation rate density, after we introduce our simulation suite and
numerical methods. Properties of individual galaxies and haloes are examined by
Keres et al. (2011), while Sijacki et al. (2011) uses idealised simulations to
analyse differences between the hydrodynamical schemes. Global baryon
statistics differ significantly between the two simulation approaches. AREPO
shows systematically higher star formation rates at late times, lower mean
temperatures averaged over the simulation volume, and different gas mass
fractions in characteristic phases of the intergalactic medium, in particular a
reduced amount of hot gas. These striking differences originate through a
higher heating rate with SPH in the outer parts of haloes, caused by viscous
dissipation of SPH's inherent sonic velocity noise and SPH's efficient damping
of subsonic turbulence injected in the halo infall region, and because of a
higher efficiency of gas stripping in AREPO. These differences also produce
more disk-like galaxy morphologies in the moving mesh calculations compared to
SPH. Our results hence demonstrate that inaccuracies in hydrodynamic solvers
can lead to comparatively large systematic differences even at the level of
predictions for the global state of baryons. Abridged
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