Simulation Data

One of the goals of the SFM project is to develop new tools which can be used to look at Gaia and Herschel data.  However it is often easier to first test the data on synthetic “simulation” data, and it was the role of the Cardiff node in SFM to provide this data for the project.  Through the links below, you can access this data for use in your own projects.

A guide to the simulations that are hosted on this server can be found in PDF format here. Please contact Zeinab Khorrami (KhorramiZ@cardiff.ac.uk) or Paul Clark (clarkpc@cardiff.ac.uk) if you have any questions.

Pure N-body simulations

We have performed a large set of pure N-body simulations of young stellar clusters that explore a wide range of parameters, such as total mass, binary fraction, initial virial balance, initial mass-segregation, etc.  These simulations were performed with the state-of-the-art Nbody6 code, and so is extremely accurate when it comes to tracking binaries (and higher order systems) and their interactions within the cluster.  The simulation data is available here.

Hydro simulations (including those with ‘sink particles’)

We have also performed a suite of hydrodynamical simulations in which stars are formed self-consistently, using the ‘sink particle’ technique. The sink particles replace the high density gas with a point mass that is able to accrete gas from the surroundings and interact gravitationally with the gas and other sink particles. These simulations allow one to follow the fragmentation of turbulent clouds, and explore how clusters are formed.  The more “physics rich” simulations allow us to explore how magnetic fields and ISM thermodynamics affect the star formation process, including the formation of prestellar cores.  These more ‘realistic’ simulations also contain the kind of ISM chemistry found in the recent study by Clark et al. 2019 (see appendex and also reference therein). All our (M)HD simulations are performed using a heavily modified version of the Arepo code. The data, along with tools to read it, can be found in this online directory.

MYOSOTIS

As part of the SFM project, we have also developed A code to Make Your Own Synthetic ObservaTIonS (MYOSOTIS).  The code is designed to take the output from Nbody (or any other) simulations and show how the cluster would look when observed with various different platforms. The code can do both imaging, and spectroscopy, making it ideally suited for exploring observational constraints on mass segregation, binary fractions, etc. MYOSOTIS also supports embedding star clusters in SPH data. The code can be found on GitHub here, along with a manual describing its use. In particular, we discuss how it can be used with our NBody6 simulations that are hosted here.