Cosmological Simulations of Galaxy Formation I: Star Formation, Feedback, Resolution and Matching the Tully--Fisher Relation (among other things)

We used fully cosmological, high resolution N-body+SPH simulations to follow the formation of disk galaxies with a rotational velocity between 140 and 280 Km/sec in a Lambda CDM universe. The simulations include gas cooling, star formation (SF), the effects of a uniform UV background and a physically motivated description of feedback from supernovae (SN). Feedback parameters have been chosen to match the star formation rate and interstellar medium (ISM) properties of local galaxies. In cosmological simulations galaxies formed rotationally supported disks with realistic exponential scale lengths and fall on the I-band and baryonic Tully Fisher relations. The combination of UV background and SN feedback drastically reduced the number of visible satellites orbiting inside a Milky Way sized halo, bringing it in fair agreement with observations. Feedback delays SF in small galaxies and more massive ones contain older stellar populations. Here we focus on the SF and feedback implementations. We also briefly discuss how high mass and force resolution and a realistic description of SF and feedback are important ingredients to match the observed properties of galaxies.