Computational advances and challenges in simulations of turbulence and star formation
astro-ph.GA, astro-ph.IM, astro-ph.SR, physics.comp-ph, physics.flu-dyn
Submitted: 2025-10-14
Updated: 2026-09-23
Comments: 120 pages, 12 figures, 1 table. Living Reviews in Computational Astrophysics, in press
Journal ref: Living Rev Comput Astrophys 12, 8 (2026)
DOI: 10.1007/s41115-026-00032-8
Code: https://github.com/pfhopkins/gizmo-public
Project page: https://princetonuniversity.github.io/Athena-Cversion
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: We review recent advances in the numerical modeling of turbulent flows and star formation.
Terminology
Abstract
We review recent advances in the numerical modeling of turbulent flows and star formation. An overview of the most widely used simulation codes and their core capabilities is provided. We then examine methods for achieving the highest-resolution magnetohydrodynamical turbulence simulations to date, highlighting challenges related to numerical viscosity and resistivity. State-of-the-art approaches to modeling gravity and star formation are discussed in detail, including implementations of star particles and feedback from jets, winds, heating, ionization, and supernovae. We review the latest techniques for radiation hydrodynamics, including ray tracing, Monte Carlo, and moment methods, with comparisons between the flux-limited diffusion, moment-1, and variable Eddington tensor methods. The final chapter summarizes advances in cosmic-ray transport schemes, emphasizing their growing importance for connecting small-scale star formation physics with galaxy-scale evolution.
Sources
- Adaptive Ray Tracing for Radiative Transfer around Point Sources
- Efficient highly-subsonic turbulent dynamo and growth of primordial magnetic fields
- AHKASH: a new Hybrid particle-in-cell code for simulations of astrophysical collisionless plasma
- Critical magnetic Reynolds number of the turbulent dynamo in collisionless plasmas
- Fundamental differences between SPH and grid methods
- Birth of magnetized low-mass protostars and circumstellar disks
- Skillful joint probabilistic weather forecasting from marginals
- Formation and evolution of interstellar filaments; Hints from velocity dispersion measurements
- Molecular filament formation and filament-cloud interaction: Hints from Nobeyama 45m telescope observations
- A radiative transfer scheme for cosmological reionization based on a local Eddington tensor
- Fervent: Chemistry-coupled, ionising and non-ionising radiative feedback in magnetohydrodynamical simulations
- TreePM: A code for Cosmological N-Body Simulations
- Outflows and Jets from Collapsing Magnetized Cloud Cores
- The dependence of star formation on initial conditions and molecular cloud structure
- The Importance of Radiative Feedback for the Stellar Initial Mass Function
- Stellar, brown dwarf and multiple star properties from a radiation hydrodynamical simulation of star cluster formation
- On the diversity and statistical properties of protostellar discs
- Modelling Accretion in Protobinary Systems
- The Formation of a Star Cluster: Predicting the Properties of Stars and Brown Dwarfs
- Growth or Decay -- I: universality of the turbulent dynamo saturation
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