
Oscar Agertz
Assistant Professor / Associate senior university lecturer / Wallenberg Academy Fellow

I am an Associate senior university lecturer at the Department of Astronomy and Theoretical Physics at Lund University, Sweden. My work mainly concerns the formation and evolution of galaxies. In 2010 I completed my Ph.D. at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Zurich. After this I took up a fellowship position at the Kavli Institure for Theoretical Physics, University of Chicago. In 2013 I became a lecturer in the astrophysics group at the Univerity of Surrey, and in 2016 I started my current position at Lund University.
The VINTERGATAN simulation
Spectroscopic surveys of the Milky Way's stars have revealed spatial, chemical and kinematical structures that encode its history. To understand the origins of these trends, we have carried out and dissected a new high resolution cosmological of a Milky Way-like galaxy, VINTERGATAN. (Vintergatan is the Swedish word for Milky Way, literally The Winter Street)
Simulation details and results in:
- Agertz et al. (2020): VINTERGATAN I: The origins of chemically, kinematically and structurally distinct discs in a simulated Milky Way-mass galaxy
- Renaud et al. (2020): VINTERGATAN II: the history of the Milky Way told by its mergers
- Renaud et al. (2020): VINTERGATAN III: how to reset the metallicity of the Milky Way
Movies can be found HERE.
Research Interests
- Galaxy formation and evolution
- Star formation, the interstellar medium and stellar feedback processes
- Galactic winds the and the nature of the circum-galactic medium
- Computational astrophysics and hydrodynamics
- Dark matter and structure formation
Teaching and supervision
- Extragalactic astronomy, 7.5HP [ASTM19] , course coordinator and lecturer
Master level course, given every second year. More information about the course can be found on the course website - Topics in Theoretical Astrophysics, 7.5HP [NAS001F] , course coordinator and lecturer
PhD level course, given every second year. More information about the course can be found on the course website - B.Sc, M.Sc and PhD students
I supervise students at B.Sc, M.Sc and PhD levels. Contact me for information about available projects.
Virtual Reality visualisation
Within the DATA theme (2017-2018) at the Pufendorf Institute for Advances Studies, I collaborated with Mattias Wallergard (Design Science, LTH), Simon Holk (Student, LTH) and researchers at Humlab (Henrik Garde, Diederick C. Nierhorster) to develop a Virtual Reality framework for visualising astrophysical data. For more information about this effort, click the presentation below.
This work continues thanks to a grant (Visualising the assembly of the Milky Way. PI: Stefen Lindgren, Humlab, LU, 2018-2020) from the e-Science Collaboration (eSSSENCE) in Sweden.
Publications
Displaying of publications. Sorted by year, then title.
From giant clumps to clouds – I. The impact of gas fraction evolution on the stability of galactic discs
Florent Renaud, Alessandro B. Romeo, Oscar Agertz
(2021) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 508 p.352-370
Journal articleEDGE : Two routes to dark matter core formation in ultra-faint dwarfs
Matthew D.A. Orkney, Justin I. Read, Martin P. Rey, Imran Nasim, Andrew Pontzen, et al.
(2021) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 504 p.3509-3522
Journal articleRunaway stars masquerading as star formation in galactic outskirts
Eric P. Andersson, Florent Renaud, Oscar Agertz
(2021) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 502 p.29-34
Journal articleEDGE : A new approach to suppressing numerical diffusion in adaptive mesh simulations of galaxy formation
Andrew Pontzen, Martin P. Rey, Corentin Cadiou, Oscar Agertz, Romain Teyssier, et al.
(2021) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 501 p.1755-1765
Journal articleVintergatan - i. The origins of chemically, kinematically, and structurally distinct discs in a simulated milky way-mass galaxy
Oscar Agertz, Florent Renaud, Sofia Feltzing, Justin I. Read, Nils Ryde, et al.
(2021) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 503 p.5826-5845
Journal articleVINTERGATAN - II. The history of the Milky Way told by its mergers
Florent Renaud, Oscar Agertz, Justin I. Read, Nils Ryde, Eric Andersson, et al.
(2021) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 503
Journal articleVINTERGATAN III: how to reset the metallicity of the Milky Way
Florent Renaud, Oscar Agertz, Eric Andersson, Justin I. Read, Nils Ryde, et al.
(2021) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 503
Journal articleEDGE: from quiescent to gas-rich to star-forming low-mass dwarf galaxies
Martin P Rey, Andrew Pontzen, Oscar Agertz, Matthew D A Orkney, Justin I Read, et al.
(2020) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 497 p.1508-1520
Journal articleConstraining churning and blurring in the Milky Way using large spectroscopic surveys - An exploratory study
Sofia Feltzing, J. Bradley Bowers, Oscar Agertz
(2020) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 493 p.1419-1433
Journal articleEDGE : The mass-metallicity relation as a critical test of galaxy formation physics
Oscar Agertz, Andrew Pontzen, Justin I. Read, Martin P. Rey, Matthew Orkney, et al.
(2020) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 491 p.1656-1672
Journal articleFrom lenticulars to blue compact dwarfs : The stellar mass fraction is regulated by disc gravitational instability
Alessandro B. Romeo, Oscar Agertz, Florent Renaud
(2020) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 499 p.5656-5664
Journal articleRapid filamentary accretion as the origin of extended thin discs
Michael Kretschmer, Oscar Agertz, Romain Teyssier
(2020) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 497 p.4346-4356
Journal articleOn the observed diversity of star formation efficiencies in Giant Molecular Clouds
Kearn Grisdale, Oscar Agertz, Florent Renaud, Alessandro B. Romeo, Julien Devriendt, et al.
(2019) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 486 p.5482-5491
Journal articleThe nature of damped HI absorbers probed by cosmological simulations: satellite accretion and outflows
Nils Henrik Pehlivan Rhodin, Oscar Agertz, Lise Christensen, Florent Renaud, Johan Peter Uldall Fynbo
(2019) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , p.3634-3634
Journal articleSupernovae feedback propagation: the role of turbulence
Loke Ohlin, Florent Renaud, Oscar Agertz
(2019) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 485 p.3887-3894
Journal article4MOST Consortium Survey 4: Milky Way Disc and Bulge High-Resolution Survey (4MIDABLE-HR)
T. Bensby, M. Bergemann, J. Rybizki, B. Lemasle, L. Howes, et al.
(2019) Messenger, 175 p.35-38
Journal article4MOST: Project overview and information for the First Call for Proposals
O. Agertz, A.~A. Berbel, J. Aird, A. Amarsi, F. Anders, et al.
(2019) The Messenger, 175 p.3-11
Journal articleEDGE: The Origin of Scatter in Ultra-faint Dwarf Stellar Masses and Surface Brightnesses
Martin P. Rey, Andrew Pontzen, Oscar Agertz, Matthew D. A. Orkney, Justin I. Read, et al.
(2019) Astrophysical Journal Letters, 886 p.3-3
Journal articlePhysical properties and scaling relations of molecular clouds : The effect of stellar feedback
Kearn Grisdale, Oscar Agertz, Florent Renaud, Alessandro B. Romeo
(2018) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 479 p.3167-3180
Journal articleObserving the circumgalactic medium of simulated galaxies through synthetic absorption spectra
Cameron J. Liang, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Oscar Agertz
(2018) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 479 p.1822-1835
Journal articleConcurrent formation of supermassive stars and globular clusters : Implications for early self-enrichment
Mark Gieles, Corinne Charbonnel, Martin G.H. Krause, Vincent Hénault-Brunet, Oscar Agertz, et al.
(2018) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 478 p.2461-2479
Journal articleGlobular cluster formation and evolution in the context of cosmological galaxy assembly : Open questions
Duncan A. Forbes, Nate Bastian, Mark Gieles, Robert A. Crain, J. M.Diederik Kruijssen, et al.
(2018) Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 474
Journal articleHigh-redshift major mergers weakly enhance star formation
J. Fensch, F. Renaud, F. Bournaud, P. -A. Duc, O. Agertz, et al.
(2017) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 465 p.1934-1949
Journal articleThe stellar mass-halo mass relation of isolated field dwarfs : A critical test of ΛCDM at the edge of galaxy formation
J. I. Read, G. Iorio, O. Agertz, F. Fraternali
(2017) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 467 p.2019-2038
Journal articleThe origin of the Milky Way globular clusters
Florent Renaud, Oscar Agertz, Mark Gieles
(2017) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 465 p.3622-3636
Journal articleThe impact of stellar feedback on the density and velocity structure of the interstellar medium
Kearn Grisdale, Oscar Agertz, Alessandro B. Romeo, Florent Renaud, Justin I. Read
(2017) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 466 p.1093-1110
Journal articleTHE AGORA HIGH-RESOLUTION GALAXY SIMULATIONS COMPARISON PROJECT. II. ISOLATED DISK TEST
Ji Hoon Kim, Oscar Agertz, Romain Teyssier, Michael J. Butler, Daniel Ceverino, et al.
(2016) Astrophysical Journal, 833
Journal articleALMA OBSERVATIONS of Lyα BLOB 1 : HALO SUBSTRUCTURE ILLUMINATED from WITHIN
J. E. Geach, D. Narayanan, Y. Matsuda, M. Hayes, Ll Mas-Ribas, et al.
(2016) Astrophysical Journal, 832
Journal articleUnderstanding the shape and diversity of dwarf galaxy rotation curves in ΛCDM
J. I. Read, G. Iorio, O. Agertz, F. Fraternali
(2016) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 462 p.3628-3645
Journal articleDark matter cores all the way down
J. I. Read, O. Agertz, M. L M Collins
(2016) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 459 p.2573-2590
Journal articleTHE IMPACT of STELLAR FEEDBACK on the STRUCTURE, SIZE, and MORPHOLOGY of GALAXIES in MILKY-WAY-SIZED DARK MATTER HALOS
Oscar Agertz, Andrey V. Kravtsov
(2016) Astrophysical Journal, 824
Journal articleColumn density profiles of multiphase gaseous haloes
Cameron J. Liang, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Oscar Agertz
(2016) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 458 p.1164-1187
Journal articleNOVel Adaptive softening for collisionless N-body simulations : Eliminating spurious haloes
Alexander Hobbs, Justin I. Read, Oscar Agertz, Francesca Iannuzzi, Chris Power
(2016) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 458 p.468-479
Journal articleEnvironmental regulation of cloud and star formation in galactic bars
F. Renaud, F. Bournaud, E. Emsellem, O. Agertz, E. Athanassoula, et al.
(2015) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 454 p.3299-3310
Journal articleOn the interplay between star formation and feedback in galaxy formation simulations
Oscar Agertz, Andrey V. Kravtsov
(2015) Astrophysical Journal, 804
Journal articleMultiple populations in globular clusters : The distinct kinematic imprints of different formation scenarios
V. Hénault-Brunet, M. Gieles, O. Agertz, J. I. Read
(2015) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 450 p.1164-1198
Journal articleCharacterizing gravitational instability in turbulent multicomponent galactic discs
Oscar Agertz, Alessandro B. Romeo, Kearn Grisdale
(2015) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 449 p.2156-2166
Journal articleGalaxies that shine : Radiation-hydrodynamical simulations of disc galaxies
Joakim Rosdahl, Joop Schaye, Romain Teyssier, Oscar Agertz
(2015) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 451 p.34-58
Journal articleLarson's scaling laws, and the gravitational instability of clumpy discs at high redshift
Alessandro B. Romeo, Oscar Agertz
(2014) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 442 p.1230-1238
Journal articleThe Smith Cloud and its dark matter halo : Survival of a galactic disc passage
Matthew Nichols, Nestor Mirabal, Oscar Agertz, Felix J. Lockman, Joss Bland-Hawthorn
(2014) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 442 p.2883-2891
Journal articleThe AGORA high-resolution galaxy simulations comparison project
Ji Hoon Kim, Tom Abel, Oscar Agertz, Greg L. Bryan, Daniel Ceverino, et al.
(2014) Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, 210
Journal articleA systematic look at the effects of radiative feedback on disc galaxy formation
Rok Roškar, Romain Teyssier, Oscar Agertz, Markus Wetzstein, Ben Moore
(2014) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 444 p.2837-2853
Journal articleSimulations of disk galaxies with cosmic ray driven galactic winds
C. M. Booth, Oscar Agertz, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Nickolay Y. Gnedin
(2013) Astrophysical Journal Letters, 777
Journal articleToward a complete accounting of energy and momentum from stellar feedback in galaxy formation simulations
Oscar Agertz, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Samuel N. Leitner, Nickolay Y. Gnedin
(2013) Astrophysical Journal, 770
Journal articleThe formation of disc galaxies in a ΛCDM universe
Oscar Agertz, Romain Teyssier, Ben Moore
(2011) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 410 p.1391-1408
Journal articleA Toomre-like stability criterion for the clumpy and turbulent interstellar medium
Alessandro B. Romeo, Andreas Burkert, Oscar Agertz
(2010) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 407 p.1223-1230
Journal articleSystematic uncertainties in the determination of the local dark matter density
Miguel Pato, Oscar Agertz, Gianfranco Bertone, Ben Moore, Romain Teyssier
(2010) Physical Review D - Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology, 82
Journal articleResolving mixing in smoothed particle hydrodynamics
J. I. Read, T. Hayfield, O. Agertz
(2010) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 405 p.1513-1530
Journal articleA dark matter disc in the milky way
J. I. Read, T. Bruch, L. Baudis, V. P. Debattista, O. Agertz, et al.
(2010) Hunting for the Dark : The Hidden Side of Galaxy Formation - Proceedings of the International Conference, 1240 p.391-394
Conference paperDisc formation and the origin of clumpy galaxies at high redshift
Oscar Agertz, Romain Teyssier, Ben Moore
(2009) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, 397
Journal articleLarge-scale galactic turbulence : Can self-gravity drive the observed H i velocity dispersions?
Oscar Agertz, George Lake, Romain Teyssier, Ben Moore, Lucio Mayer, et al.
(2009) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 392 p.294-308
Journal articleA dark disc in the Milky Way
J. I. Read, G. Lake, O. Agertz, V. Debattista
(2008) Astronomical Notes - Astronomische Nachrichten, 329 p.1022-1024
Journal articleDiscreteness effects in ACDM simulations : A wavelet-statistical view
Alessandro B. Romeo, Oscar Agertz, Ben Moore, Joachim Stadel
(2008) Astrophysical Journal, 686 p.1-12
Journal articleThin, thick and dark discs in ΛcDM
J. I. Read, G. Lake, O. Agertz, Victor P. Debattista
(2008) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 389 p.1041-1057
Journal articleFundamental differences between SPH and grid methods
Oscar Agertz, Ben Moore, Joachim Stadel, Doug Potter, Francesco Miniati, et al.
(2007) Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 380 p.963-978
Journal articleAn alternative to grids and glasses : Quaquaversal pre-initial conditions for N-body simulations
Steen H. Hansen, Oscar Agertz, Michael Joyce, Joachim Stadel, Ben Moore, et al.
(2007) Astrophysical Journal, 656 p.631-635
Journal articleThe source of ionization along the magellanic stream
Joss Bland-Hawthorn, Ralph Sutherland, Oscar Agertz, Ben Moore
(2007) Astrophysical Journal, 670
Journal article