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Ruediger Pakmor

Publications and source records attributed to Ruediger Pakmor.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

The star formation histories of dwarf galaxies in Local Group cosmological simulations

We use the APOSTLE and Auriga cosmological simulations to study the star formation histories (SFHs) of field and satellite dwarf galaxies. Despite sizeable galaxy-to-galaxy scatter, the SFHs of APOSTLE and Auriga dwarfs exhibit robust average trends with galaxy stellar mass: faint field dwarfs ($10^5<M_{\rm star}/M_\odot<10^{6.5}$) have, on average, steadily declining SFHs, whereas brighter dwarfs ($10^{7.5}<M_{\rm star}/M_\odot<10^{9}$) show the opposite trend. Intermediate-mass dwarfs have roughly constant SFHs. Satellites exhibit similar average trends, but with substantially suppressed star formation in the most recent $\sim 5$ Gyr, likely as a result of gas loss due to tidal and ram-pressure stripping after entering the haloes of their primaries. These simple mass and environmental trends are in good agreement with the derived SFHs of Local Group (LG) dwarfs whose photometry reaches the oldest main sequence turnoff. SFHs of galaxies with less deep data show deviations from these trends, but this may be explained, at least in part, by the large galaxy-to-galaxy scatter, the limited sample size, and the large uncertainties of the inferred SFHs. Confirming the predicted mass and environmental trends will require deeper photometric data than currently available, especially for isolated dwarfs.

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The optical morphologies of galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation: a comparison to Pan-STARRS observations

We have generated synthetic images of $\sim$27,000 galaxies from the IllustrisTNG and the original Illustris hydrodynamic cosmological simulations, designed to match Pan-STARRS observations of $\log_{10}(M_{\ast}/{\rm M}_{\odot}) \approx 9.8$-$11.3$ galaxies at $z \approx 0.05$. Most of our synthetic images were created with the SKIRT radiative transfer code, including the effects of dust attenuation and scattering, and performing the radiative transfer directly on the Voronoi mesh used by the simulations themselves. We have analysed both our synthetic and real Pan-STARRS images with the newly developed $\tt{statmorph}$ code, which calculates non-parametric morphological diagnostics -- including the Gini-$M_{20}$ and concentration-asymmetry-smoothness (CAS) statistics -- and performs two-dimensional Sérsic fits. Overall, we find that the optical morphologies of IllustrisTNG galaxies are in good agreement with observations, and represent a substantial improvement compared to the original Illustris simulation. In particular, the locus of the Gini-$M_{20}$ diagram is consistent with that inferred from observations, while the median trends with stellar mass of all the morphological, size and shape parameters considered in this work lie within the $\sim$1$σ$ scatter of the observational trends. However, the IllustrisTNG model has some difficulty with more stringent tests, such as producing a strong morphology-colour relation. This results in a somewhat higher fraction of red discs and blue spheroids compared to observations. Similarly, the morphology-size relation is problematic: while observations show that discs tend to be larger than spheroids at a fixed stellar mass, such a trend is not present in IllustrisTNG.

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A Quantification of the Butterfly Effect in Cosmological Simulations and Implications for Galaxy Scaling Relations

We study the chaotic-like behavior of cosmological simulations by quantifying how minute perturbations grow over time and manifest as macroscopic differences in galaxy properties. When we run pairs of 'shadow' simulations that are identical except for random minute initial displacements to particle positions (e.g. of order 1e-7pc), the results diverge from each other at the individual galaxy level (while the statistical properties of the ensemble of galaxies are unchanged). After cosmological times, the global properties of pairs of 'shadow' galaxies that are matched between the simulations differ from each other generally at a level of ~2-25%, depending on the considered physical quantity. We perform these experiments using cosmological volumes of (25-50Mpc/h)^3 evolved either purely with dark matter, or with baryons and star-formation but no feedback, or using the full feedback model of the IllustrisTNG project. The runs cover four resolution levels spanning a factor of 512 in mass. We find that without feedback the differences between shadow galaxies generally become smaller as the resolution increases, but with the IllustrisTNG model the results are mostly converging towards a 'floor'. This hints at the role of feedback in setting the chaotic properties of galaxy formation. Importantly, we compare the macroscopic differences between shadow galaxies to the overall scatter in various galaxy scaling relations, and conclude that for the star formation-mass and the Tully-Fisher relations the butterfly effect in our simulations contributes significantly to the overall scatter. We find that our results are robust to whether random numbers are used in the sub-grid models or not. We discuss the implications for galaxy formation theory in general and for cosmological simulations in particular.

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Faraday rotation maps of disk galaxies

Faraday rotation is one of the most widely used observables to infer the strength and configuration of the magnetic field in the ionised gas of the Milky Way and nearby spiral galaxies. Here we compute synthetic Faraday rotation maps at $z=0$ for a set of disk galaxies from the Auriga high-resolution cosmological simulations, for different observer positions within and outside the galaxy. We find that the strength of the Faraday rotation of our simulated galaxies for a hypothetic observer at the solar circle is broadly consistent with the Faraday rotation seen for the Milky Way. The same holds for an observer outside the galaxy and the observed signal of the nearby spiral galaxy M51. However, we also find that the structure and angular power spectra of the synthetic all-sky Faraday rotation maps vary strongly with azimuthal position along the solar circle. We argue that this variation is a result of the structure of the magnetic field of the galaxy that is dominated by an azimuthal magnetic field ordered scales of several kpc, but has radial and vertical magnetic field components that are only ordered on scales of 1-2 kpc. Because the magnetic field strength decreases exponentially with height above the disk, the Faraday rotation for an observer at the solar circle is dominated by the local environment. This represents a severe obstacle for attempts to reconstruct the global magnetic field of the Milky Way from Faraday rotation maps alone without including additional observables.

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The abundance, distribution, and physical nature of highly ionized oxygen OVI, OVII, and OVIII in IllustrisTNG

We explore the abundance, spatial distribution, and physical properties of the OVI, OVII, and OVIII ions of oxygen in circumgalactic and intergalactic media (the CGM, IGM, and WHIM). We use the TNG100 and TNG300 large volume cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical simulations. Modeling the ionization states of simulated oxygen, we find good agreement with observations of the low-redshift OVI column density distribution function (CDDF), and present its evolution for all three ions from z=0 to z=4. Producing mock quasar absorption line spectral surveys, we show that the IllustrisTNG simulations are fully consistent with constraints on the OVI content of the CGM from COS-Halos and other low redshift observations, producing columns as high as observed. We measure the total amount of mass and average column densities of each ion using hundreds of thousands of simulated galaxies spanning 10^11 < Mhalo/Msun < 10^15 corresponding to 10^9 < M*/Msun < 10^12 in stellar mass. Stacked radial profiles of OVI are computed in 3D number density and 2D projected column, decomposing into the 1-halo and 2-halo terms. Relating halo OVI to properties of the central galaxy, we find a correlation between the (g-r) color of a galaxy and the total amount of OVI in its CGM. In comparison to the COS-Halos finding, this leads to a dichotomy of columns around star-forming versus passive galaxies at fixed stellar (or halo) mass. We demonstrate that this correlation is a direct result of blackhole feedback associated with quenching and represents a causal consequence of galactic-scale baryonic feedback impacting the physical state of the circumgalactic medium.

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First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: the galaxy color bimodality

We introduce the first two simulations of the IllustrisTNG project, a next generation of cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations, focusing on the optical colors of galaxies. We explore TNG100, a rerun of the original Illustris box, and TNG300, which includes 2x2500^3 resolution elements in a volume twenty times larger. Here we present first results on the galaxy color bimodality at low redshift. Accounting for the attenuation of stellar light by dust, we compare the simulated (g-r) colors of 10^9 < M*/Msun < 10^12.5 galaxies to the observed distribution from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find a striking improvement with respect to the original Illustris simulation, as well as excellent quantitative agreement in comparison to the observations, with a sharp transition in median color from blue to red at a characteristic M* ~ 10^10.5 Msun. Investigating the build-up of the color-mass plane and the formation of the red sequence, we demonstrate that the primary driver of galaxy color transition in the TNG model is supermassive blackhole feedback in its low-accretion state. Across the entire population we measure a median color transition timescale dt_green of ~1.6 Gyr, a value which drops for increasingly massive galaxies. We find signatures of the physical process of quenching: at fixed stellar mass, redder galaxies have lower SFRs, gas fractions, and gas metallicities; their stellar populations are also older and their large-scale interstellar magnetic fields weaker than in bluer galaxies. Finally, we measure the amount of stellar mass growth on the red sequence. Galaxies with M* > 10^11 Msun which redden at z<1 accumulate on average ~25% of their final z=0 mass post-reddening; at the same time, ~18% of such massive galaxies acquire half or more of their final stellar mass while on the red sequence.

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The Size Evolution of Star-forming and Quenched Galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation

We analyze scaling relations and evolution histories of galaxy sizes in TNG100, part of the IllustrisTNG simulation suite. Observational qualitative trends of size with stellar mass, star-formation rate and redshift are reproduced, and a quantitative comparison of projected r-band sizes at 0~ ~10^{9.5}Msun, the evolution of the median main progenitor differs, with quenched galaxies hardly growing in median size before quenching, whereas main-sequence galaxies grow their median size continuously, thus opening a gap from the progenitors of quenched galaxies. This is partly because the main-sequence high-redshift progenitors of quenched z=0 galaxies are drawn from the lower end of the size distribution of the overall population of main-sequence high-redshift galaxies. (ii) Quenched galaxies with M_{*,z=0}>~10^{9.5}Msun experience a steep size growth on the size-mass plane after their quenching time, but with the exception of galaxies with M_{*,z=0}>~10^{11}Msun, the size growth after quenching is small in absolute terms, such that most of the size (and mass) growth of quenched galaxies (and its variation among them) occurs while they are still on the main-sequence. After they become quenched, the size growth rate of quenched galaxies as a function of time, as opposed to versus mass, is similar to that of main-sequence galaxies. Hence, the size gap is retained down to z=0.

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Simulating Galaxy Formation with the IllustrisTNG Model

We introduce an updated physical model to simulate the formation and evolution of galaxies in cosmological, large-scale gravity+magnetohydrodynamical simulations with the moving mesh code AREPO. The overall framework builds upon the successes of the Illustris galaxy formation model, and includes prescriptions for star formation, stellar evolution, chemical enrichment, primordial and metal-line cooling of the gas, stellar feedback with galactic outflows, and black hole formation, growth and multi-mode feedback. In this paper we give a comprehensive description of the physical and numerical advances which form the core of the IllustrisTNG (The Next Generation) framework. We focus on the revised implementation of the galactic winds, of which we modify the directionality, velocity, thermal content, and energy scalings, and explore its effects on the galaxy population. As described in earlier works, the model also includes a new black hole driven kinetic feedback at low accretion rates, magnetohydrodynamics, and improvements to the numerical scheme. Using a suite of (25 Mpc $h^{-1}$)$^3$ cosmological boxes we assess the outcome of the new model at our fiducial resolution. The presence of a self-consistently amplified magnetic field is shown to have an important impact on the stellar content of $10^{12} M_{\rm sun}$ haloes and above. Finally, we demonstrate that the new galactic winds promise to solve key problems identified in Illustris in matching observational constraints and affecting the stellar content and sizes of the low mass end of the galaxy population.

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Magnetic field formation in the Milky Way-like disk galaxies of the Auriga project

The magnetic fields observed in the Milky~Way and nearby galaxies appear to be in equipartition with the turbulent, thermal, and cosmic ray energy densities, and hence are expected to be dynamically important. However, the origin of these strong magnetic fields is still unclear, and most previous attempts to simulate galaxy formation from cosmological initial conditions have ignored them altogether. Here, we analyse the magnetic fields predicted by the simulations of the Auriga Project, a set of 30 high-resolution cosmological zoom simulations of Milky~Way-like galaxies, carried out with a moving-mesh magneto-hydrodynamics code and a detailed galaxy formation physics model. We find that the magnetic fields grow exponentially at early times owing to a small-scale dynamo with an e-folding time of roughly $100\,\rm{Myr}$ in the center of halos until saturation occurs around $z=2-3$, when the magnetic energy density reaches about $10\%$ of the turbulent energy density with a typical strength of $10-50\,\rm{μG}$. In the galactic centers the ratio between magnetic and turbulent energy remains nearly constant until $z=0$. At larger radii, differential rotation in the disks leads to linear amplification that typically saturates around $z=0.5$ to $z=0$. The final radial and vertical variations of the magnetic field strength can be well described by two joint exponential profiles, and are in good agreement with observational constraints. Overall, the magnetic fields have only little effect on the global evolution of the galaxies as it takes too long to reach equipartition. We also demonstrate that our results are well converged with numerical resolution.

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The Auriga Project: the properties and formation mechanisms of disc galaxies across cosmic time

We introduce a suite of thirty cosmological magneto-hydrodynamical zoom simulations of the formation of galaxies in isolated Milky Way mass dark haloes. These were carried out with the moving mesh code \textlcsc{AREPO}, together with a comprehensive model for galaxy formation physics, including AGN feedback and magnetic fields, which produces realistic galaxy populations in large cosmological simulations. We demonstrate that our simulations reproduce a wide range of present-day observables, in particular, two component disc dominated galaxies with appropriate stellar masses, sizes, rotation curves, star formation rates and metallicities. We investigate the driving mechanisms that set present-day disc sizes/scale lengths, and find that they are related to the angular momentum of halo material. We show that the largest discs are produced by quiescent mergers that inspiral into the galaxy and deposit high angular momentum material into the pre-existing disc, simultaneously increasing the spin of dark matter and gas in the halo. More violent mergers and strong AGN feedback play roles in limiting disc size by destroying pre-existing discs and by suppressing gas accretion onto the outer disc, respectively. The most important factor that leads to compact discs, however, is simply a low angular momentum for the halo. In these cases, AGN feedback plays an important role in limiting central star formation and the formation of a massive bulge.

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Increasing blackhole feedback induced quenching with anisotropic thermal conduction

Feedback from central supermassive blackholes is often invoked to explain the low star formation rates in massive galaxies at the centers of galaxy clusters. However, the detailed physics of the coupling of the injected feedback energy with the intracluster medium is still unclear. Using high-resolution magnetohydrodynamic cosmological simulations of galaxy cluster formation, we investigate the role of anisotropic thermal conduction in shaping the thermodynamic structure of clusters, and, in particular, in modifying the impact of black hole feedback. Stratified anisotropically conducting plasmas are formally always unstable, and thus more prone to mixing, an expectation borne out by our results. The increased mixing efficiently isotropizes the injected feedback energy which in turn significantly improves the coupling between the feedback energy and the intracluster medium. This facilitates an earlier disruption of the cool core, reduces the star formation rate by more than an order of magnitude, and results in earlier quenching despite an overall lower amount of feedback energy injected into the cluster core. With conduction, the metallicity gradients and dispersions are lowered, aligning them better with observational constraints. These results highlight the important role of thermal conduction in establishing and maintaining quiescence of massive galaxies.

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The role of cosmic ray pressure in accelerating galactic outflows

We study the formation of galactic outflows from supernova explosions (SNe) with the moving-mesh code AREPO in a stratified column of gas with a surface density similar to the Milky Way disk at the solar circle. We compare different simulation models for SNe placement and energy feedback, including cosmic rays (CR), and find that models that place SNe in dense gas and account for CR diffusion are able to drive outflows with similar mass loading as obtained from a random placement of SNe with no CRs. Despite this similarity, CR-driven outflows differ in several other key properties including their overall clumpiness and velocity. Moreover, the forces driving these outflows originate in different sources of pressure, with the CR diffusion model relying on non-thermal pressure gradients to create an outflow driven by internal pressure and the random-placement model depending on kinetic pressure gradients to propel a ballistic outflow. CRs therefore appear to be non-negligible physics in the formation of outflows from the interstellar medium.

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A moving mesh unstaggered constrained transport scheme for magnetohydrodynamics

We present a constrained transport (CT) algorithm for solving the 3D ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations on a moving mesh, which maintains the divergence-free condition on the magnetic field to machine-precision. Our CT scheme uses an unstructured representation of the magnetic vector potential, making the numerical method simple and computationally efficient. The scheme is implemented in the moving mesh code Arepo. We demonstrate the performance of the approach with simulations of driven MHD turbulence, a magnetized disc galaxy, and a cosmological volume with primordial magnetic field. We compare the outcomes of these experiments to those obtained with a previously implemented Powell divergence-cleaning scheme. While CT and the Powell technique yield similar results in idealized test problems, some differences are seen in situations more representative of astrophysical flows. In the turbulence simulations, the Powell cleaning scheme artificially grows the mean magnetic field, while CT maintains this conserved quantity of ideal MHD. In the disc simulation, CT gives slower magnetic field growth rate and saturates to equipartition between the turbulent kinetic energy and magnetic energy, whereas Powell cleaning produces a dynamically dominant magnetic field. Such difference has been observed in adaptive-mesh refinement codes with CT and smoothed-particle hydrodynamics codes with divergence-cleaning. In the cosmological simulation, both approaches give similar magnetic amplification, but Powell exhibits more cell-level noise. CT methods in general are more accurate than divergence-cleaning techniques, and, when coupled to a moving mesh can exploit the advantages of automatic spatial/temporal adaptivity and reduced advection errors, allowing for improved astrophysical MHD simulations.

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Magnetic Field Amplification During the Common Envelope Phase

During the common envelope (CE) phase, a giant star in a binary system overflows its Roche lobe and unstable mass transfer leads to a spiral-in of the companion, resulting in a close binary system or in a merger of the stellar cores. Dynamo processes during the CE phase have been proposed as a mechanism to generate magnetic fields that are important for forming magnetic white dwarfs (MWDs) and for shaping planetary nebulae. Here, we present the first magnetohydrodynamics simulations of the dynamical spiral-in during a CE phase. We find that magnetic fields are strongly amplified in the accretion stream around the $1M_\odot$ companion as it spirals into the envelope of a $2M_\odot$ RG. This leads to field strengths of 10 to 100 kG throughout the envelope after 120 d. The magnetic field amplification is consistent with being driven by the magnetorotational instability. The field strengths reached in our simulation make the magnetic field interesting for diagnostic purposes, but they are dynamically irrelevant. They are also too small to explain the formation of the highest fields found in MWDs, but may be relevant for luminous red novae, and detecting magnetic fields in these events would support the scenario as proposed here.

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Galactic winds driven by isotropic and anisotropic cosmic ray diffusion in disk galaxies

The physics of cosmic rays (CR) is a promising candidate for explaining the driving of galactic winds and outflows. Recent galaxy formation simulations have demonstrated the need for active CR transport either in the form of diffusion or streaming to successfully launch winds in galaxies. However, due to computational limitations, most previous simulations have modeled CR transport isotropically. Here, we discuss high resolution simulations of isolated disk galaxies in a $10^{11}\rm{M_\odot}$ halo with the moving mesh code {\sc Arepo} that include injection of CRs from supernovae, advective transport, CR cooling, and CR transport through isotropic or anisotropic diffusion. We show that either mode of diffusion leads to the formation of strong bipolar outflows. However, they develop significantly later in the simulation with anisotropic diffusion compared to the simulation with isotropic diffusion. Moreover, we find that isotropic diffusion allows most of the CRs to quickly diffuse out of the disk, while in the simulation with anisotropic diffusion, most CRs remain in the disk once the magnetic field becomes dominated by its azimuthal component, which occurs after $\sim 300\,{\rm Myrs}$. This has important consequences for the gas dynamics in the disk. In particular, we show that isotropic diffusion strongly suppresses the amplification of the magnetic field in the disk compared to anisotropic or no diffusion models. We therefore conclude that reliable simulations which include CR transport inevitably need to account for anisotropic diffusion.

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Semi-implicit anisotropic cosmic ray transport on an unstructured moving mesh

In the interstellar medium of galaxies and the intracluster gas of galaxy clusters, the charged particles making up cosmic rays are moving almost exclusively along (but not across) magnetic field lines. The resulting anisotropic transport of cosmic rays in the form of diffusion or streaming not only affects the gas dynamics but also rearranges the magnetic fields themselves. The coupled dynamics of magnetic fields and cosmic rays can thus impact the formation and evolution of galaxies and the thermal evolution of galaxy clusters in critical ways. Numerically studying these effects requires solvers for anisotropic diffusion that are accurate, efficient, and robust, requirements that have proven difficult to satisfy in practice. Here, we present an anisotropic diffusion solver on an unstructured moving mesh that is conservative, does not violate the entropy condition, allows for semi-implicit time integration with individual timesteps, and only requires solving a single linear system of equations per timestep. We apply our new scheme to a large number of test problems and show that it works as well or better than previous implementations. Finally, we demonstrate for a numerically demanding simulation of the formation of an isolated disk galaxy that our local time-stepping scheme reproduces the results obtained with global time-stepping at a fraction of the computational cost.

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Do electron-capture supernovae make neutron stars? First multidimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the oxygen deflagration

In the classical picture, electron-capture supernovae and the accretion-induced collapse of oxygen-neon white dwarfs (ONeWDs) undergo an oxygen deflagration phase before gravitational collapse produces a neutron star (NS). These types of core collapse events are postulated to explain several astronomical phenomena. In this work, the deflagration phase is simulated for the first time using multidimensional hydrodynamics, with the aim of gaining new insight into the explosive deaths of $8-10~M_\odot$ stars and ONeWDs that accrete material from a binary companion star. The main aim is to determine whether these events are thermonuclear or core-collapse supernova explosions, and hence whether NSs are formed by such phenomena. The deflagration is simulated in ONe cores with three different central ignition densities. The intermediate density case is perhaps the most realistic, being based on recent nuclear physics calculations and 1D stellar models. The 3D hydrodynamic simulations presented in this work begin from a centrally confined flame structure using a level-set-based flame approach and are performed in $256^3$ and $512^3$ numerical resolutions. In the simulations with intermediate and low ignition density, the cores do not appear to collapse into NSs. Instead, almost a solar mass of material becomes unbound from the cores, leaving bound remnants. These simulations represent the case in which semiconvective mixing during the electron-capture phase preceding the deflagration is inefficient. The masses of the bound remnants double when Coulomb corrections are included in the EoS, however they still do not exceed the effective Chandrasekhar mass and, hence, would not collapse into NSs. The simulations with the highest ignition density ($\log_{10}ρ_{\rm c}=10.3$), representing the case where semiconvective mixing is very efficient, show clear signs that the core will collapse into a NS.

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Three-dimensional simulations of gravitationally confined detonations compared to observations of SN 1991T

The gravitationally confined detonation (GCD) model has been proposed as a possible explosion mechanism for Type Ia supernovae in the single-degenerate evolution channel. Driven by buoyancy, a deflagration flame rises in a narrow cone towards the surface. For the most part, the flow of the expanding ashes remains radial, but upon reaching the outer, low-pressure layers of the white dwarf, an additional lateral component develops. This makes the deflagration ashes converge again at the opposite side, where the compression heats fuel and a detonation may be launched. To test the GCD explosion model, we perform a 3D simulation for a model with an ignition spot offset near the upper limit of what is still justifiable, 200 km. This simulation meets our deliberately optimistic detonation criteria and we initiate a detonation. The detonation burns through the white dwarf and leads to its complete disruption. We determine nucleosynthetic yields by post-processing 10^6 tracer particles with a 384 nuclide reaction network and we present multi-band light curves and time-dependent optical spectra. We find that our synthetic observables show a prominent viewing-angle sensitivity in UV and blue bands, which is in tension with observed SNe Ia. The strong dependence on viewing-angle is caused by the asymmetric distribution of the deflagration ashes in the outer ejecta layers. Finally, we perform a comparison of our model to SN 1991T. The overall flux-level of the model is slightly too low and the model predicts pre-maximum light spectral features due to Ca, S, and Si that are too strong. Furthermore, the model chemical abundance stratification qualitatively disagrees with recent abundance tomography results in two key areas: our model lacks low velocity stable Fe and instead has copious amounts of high-velocity 56Ni and stable Fe. We therefore do not find good agreement of the model with SN 1991T.

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