Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter Computational

Friday, 13 September 2024, 14:50   (S26)

Exploring [CII] line emission at high redshifts with HYACINTH

Prachi Khatri, Emilio Romano-Díaz, Cristiano Porciani
Argelander Institute for Astronomy, University of Bonn

Modelling the molecular gas content of galaxies is a highly non-linear, multi-scale problem in astrophysics. On the one hand, it is necessary to simulate galaxies in realistic environments as they are affected by outflows and gas accretion from the cosmic web. On the other hand, molecular-cloud chemistry is regulated by conditions on sub-parsec scales. To overcome this challenge, we have developed a new sub-grid model, HYACINTH – HYdrogen And Carbon chemistry in the INTerstellar medium in Hydro simulations – that can be embedded into cosmological simulations of galaxy formation to calculate the non-equilibrium abundances of molecular hydrogen and its carbon-based tracers, namely, CO, C, and C+ on the fly. Using HYACINTH, we have performed a suite of cosmological galaxy formation simulations down to redshift z=3. We obtain the [CII] fine-structure line emission from the simulated galaxies in post-processing. We explore several aspects of this line at z ≳ 3 including the [CII]-SFR correlation on resolved scales, the reliability of the [CII] line as a molecular gas tracer, the [CII] luminosity function, and extended [CII] emission that is also found in some recent observations at high redshifts. In my talk, I will present HYACINTH and its application to cosmological simulations of galaxy formation.