The Latte Project: The Milky Way on FIRE - Simulating a Realistic Population of Satellite Dwarf Galaxies around a Milky Way-like Galaxy

Low-mass "dwarf" galaxies represent the most significant challenges to the cold dark matter (CDM) model of cosmological structure formation, as they trace structure formation on the smallest cosmological scales. However, because they reside in low-mass halos with shallow gravitational potential wells, dwarf galaxies also are highly sensitive to stellar feedback processes. Because these faintest galaxies are readily observable only within the Local Group of the Milky Way (MW) and Andromeda (M31), it is critical to understand and model their formation within the environment of a MW-like host. I present a new suite of cosmological zoom-in hydrodynamic simulations that model the full formation history of a MW-like galaxy at parsec-scale resolution with the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE) model for star formation, stellar evolution, and stellar feedback. For the first time, this simulation also self-consistently resolves the internal structure of the satellite dwarf galaxies around a MW-like host, including the relevant baryonic physics to predict their stellar populations. I will present first results from this ultra-high-resolution simulation suite, with implications for the long-standing "missing satellites", "core-cusp", and "too-big-to-fail" problems of CDM cosmology. I also will discuss implications for the many ongoing and upcoming observations of the Local Universe, including DES.

Speaker: Andrew Wetzel, Caltech