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Using an isolated Milky Way-mass galaxy simulation, we compare results from 9 state-of-the-art gravito-hydrodynamics codes widely used in the numerical community. We utilize the infrastructure we have built for the AGORA High-resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project. This includes the common disk initial conditions, common physics models (e.g., radiative cooling and UV background by the standardized package Grackle) and common analysis toolkit yt, all of which are publicly available. Subgrid physics models such as Jeans pressure floor, star formation, supernova feedback energy, and metal production are carefully constrained across code platforms. With numerical accuracy that resolves the disk scale height, we find that the codes overall agree well with one another in many dimensions including: gas and stellar surface densities, rotation curves, velocity dispersions, density and temperature distribution functions, disk vertical heights, stellar clumps, star formation rates, and Kennicutt-Schmidt relations. Quantities such as velocity dispersions are very robust (agreement within a few tens of percent at all radii) while measures like newly-formed stellar clump mass functions show more significant variation (difference by up to a factor of ~3). Systematic differences exist, for example, between mesh-based and particle-based codes in the low density region, and between more diffusive and less diffusive schemes in the high density tail of the density distribution. Yet intrinsic code differences are generally small compared to the variations in numerical implementations of the common subgrid physics such as supernova feedback. Our experiment reassures that, if adequately designed in accordance with our proposed common parameters, results of a modern high-resolution galaxy formation simulation are more sensitive to input physics than to intrinsic differences in numerical schemes., Comment: 28 pages, 35 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, Image resolution greatly reduced, High-resolution version of this article is available at http://www.jihoonkim.org/agora/AGORA_Paper4_draft.pdf, The first paper of the AGORA Initiative is at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014ApJS..210...14K, More information on AGORA is at http://www.AGORAsimulations.org/

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are extremely gas-poor, dark matter-dominated galaxies, which make them ideal to test the predictions of the cold dark matter (CDM) model. We argue that the removal of the baryonic component from gas-rich dwarf irregular galaxies, the progenitors of dSphs, can substantially reduce their central density. Thus, it may play an important role in alleviating one of the problems of the CDM model related to the structure of relatively massive satellite galaxies of the Milky Way (MW). Traditionally, collisionless cosmological N-body simulations are used when confronting theoretical predictions with observations. However, these simulations assume that the baryon fraction everywhere in the Universe is equal to the cosmic mean, which can be incorrect for dSphs. We find that the combination of (i) the lower baryon fraction in dSphs compared to the cosmic mean and (ii) the concentration of baryons in the inner part of the MW halo can go a long way towards explaining the observed circular velocity profiles of dSphs. We find that the blowing away of baryons by ram pressure, when the dwarfs fall into larger galaxies, decreases the circular velocity profile of the satellite and reduces the density in the central ~200-500 pc by a factor of (1 - f_b)^4 ~ 0.5, where f_b is the cosmological fraction of baryons. Additionally, the enhanced baryonic mass in the central regions of the parent galaxy generates tidal forces, which are larger than those experienced by subhaloes in traditional N-body simulations. Increased tidal forces substantially alter circular velocity profiles for satellites with pericentres less than 50 kpc. We show that these two effects are strong enough to bring the predictions of subhaloes from CDM simulations into agreement with the observed structure of MW dSphs, regardless of the details of the baryonic processes., Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, and 3 tables; accepted for publication in MNRAS

Broad absorption line (BAL) quasars probe the high velocity gas ejected by luminous accreting black holes. BAL variability timescales place constraints on the size, location, and dynamics of the emitting and absorbing gas near the supermassive black hole. We present multi-epoch spectroscopy of seventeen BAL QSOs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) using the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory's 1.5m telescope's FAST Spectrograph. These objects were identified as BALs in SDSS, observed with Chandra, and then monitored with FAST at observed-frame cadences of 1, 3, 9, 27, and 81 days, as well as 1 and 2 years. We also monitor a set of non-BAL quasars with matched redshift and luminosity as controls. We identify significant variability in the BALs, particularly at the 1 and 2 year cadences, and use its magnitude and frequency to constrain the outflows impacting the broad absorption line region., Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, Conference proceedings for "AGN Winds in Charleston," Charleston, SC, Oct 15-18, 2011. To be published by ASP