Introducing the AIDA-TNG project: Galaxy formation in alternative dark matter models

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Augusto Righi”, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Via Gobetti 93/2, I-40129 Bologna, Italy
² INAF-Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, Via Piero Gobetti 93/3, I-40129 Bologna, Italy
³ INFN-Sezione di Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 6/2, I-40127 Bologna, Italy
⁴ Universität Heidelberg, Zentrum für Astronomie, ITA, Albert-Ueberle-Str. 2, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
⁵ Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
⁶ Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 1, D-85740, Garching bei München, Germany
⁷ Department of Physics, Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

^⋆ Corresponding author: giulia.despali@unibo.it

Received: 21 January 2025
Accepted: 27 March 2025

Abstract

We introduce the AIDA-TNG project, a suite of cosmological magnetohydrodynamic simulations that simultaneously model galaxy formation and different variations in the underlying dark matter model. We consider the standard cold dark matter model and five variations, including three warm dark matter scenarios and two self-interacting models with a constant or velocity-dependent cross-section. In each model, we simulated two cosmological boxes of 51.7 and 110.7 Mpc on a side with the same initial conditions as TNG50 and TNG100, and we combined the variations in the physics of dark matter with the fiducial IllustrisTNG galaxy formation model. The AIDA-TNG runs are thus ideal for studying the simultaneous effects of baryons and alternative dark matter models on observable properties of galaxies and large-scale structures. We resolved haloes in the range between 10⁸ and 4×10¹⁴ M_⊙ and scales down to the nominal resolution of 570 pc in the highest-resolution runs. This work presents the first results on statistical quantities such as the halo mass function and the matter power spectrum. We quantified the modification in the number of haloes and the power on scales smaller than 1 Mpc due to the combination of baryonic and dark matter physics. Despite being calibrated on cold dark matter, we find that the TNG galaxy formation model can produce a realistic galaxy population in all scenarios. The stellar and gas mass fraction, stellar mass function, black hole mass as a function of stellar mass, and star formation rate density are very similar in all dark matter models, with some deviations only in the most extreme warm dark matter model. Finally, we also quantify changes in halo structure due to warm and self-interacting dark matter, which appear in the density profiles, concentration-mass relation, and galaxy sizes.