Aims. We examine radial and vertical metallicity gradients using a suite of disk galaxy hydrodynamical simulations, supplemented with two classic chemical evolution approaches. We determine the rate of change of gradient slope and reconcile the differences existing between extant models and observations within the canonical "inside-out" disk growth paradigm. Methods. A suite of 25 cosmological disks is used to examine the evolution of metallicity gradients; this consists of 19 galaxies selected from the RaDES (Ramses Disk Environment Study) sample, realised with the adaptive mesh refinement code ramses, including eight drawn from the "field" and six from "loose group" environments. Four disks are selected from the MUGS (McMaster Unbiased Galaxy Simulations) sample, generated with the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code gasoline. Two chemical evolution models of inside-out disk growth were employed to contrast the temporal evolution of their radial gradients with those of the simulations. Results. We first show that generically flatter gradients are observed at redshift zero when comparing older stars with those forming today, consistent with expectations of kinematically hot simulations, but counter to that observed in the Milky Way. The vertical abundance gradients at ∼1−3 disk scalelengths are comparable to those observed in the thick disk of the Milky Way, but significantly shallower than those seen in the thin disk. Most importantly, we find that systematic differences exist between the predicted evolution of radial abundance gradients in the RaDES and chemical evolution models, compared with the MUGS sample; specifically, the MUGS simulations are systematically steeper at high-redshift, and present much more rapid evolution in their gradients. Conclusions. We find that the majority of the models predict radial gradients today which are consistent with those observed in late-type disks, but they evolve to this self-similarity in different fashions, despite each adhering to classical "inside-out" growth. We find that radial dependence of the efficiency with which stars form as a function of time drives the differences seen in the gradients; systematic differences in the sub-grid physics between the various codes are responsible for setting these gradients. Recent, albeit limited, data at redshift z ∼ 1.5 are consistent with the steeper gradients seen in our SPH sample, suggesting a modest revision of the classical chemical evolution models may be required.

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A crucial aspect of 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer is the choice of the spatial grid used to partition the dusty medium. We critically investigate the use of octree grids in Monte Carlo dust radiative transfer, with two different octree construction algorithms (regular and barycentric subdivision) and three different octree traversal algorithms (top-down, neighbour list, and the bookkeeping method). In general, regular octree grids need higher levels of subdivision compared to the barycentric grids for a fixed maximum cell mass threshold criterion. The total number of grid cells, however, depends on the geometry of the model. Surprisingly, regular octree grid simulations turn out to be 10 to 20% more efficient in run time than the barycentric grid simulations, even for those cases where the latter contain fewer grid cells than the former. Furthermore, we find that storing neighbour lists for each cell in an octree, ordered according to decreasing overlap area, is worth the additional memory and implementation overhead: using neighbour lists can cut down the grid traversal by 20% compared to the traditional top-down method. In conclusion, the combination of a regular node subdivision and the neighbour list method results in the most efficient octree structure for Monte Carlo radiative transfer simulations.

We analyse the kinematics and chemistry of the bulge stars of two simulated disc galaxies using our chemodynamical galaxy evolution code GCD+. First we compare stars that are born inside the galaxy with those that are born outside the galaxy and are accreted into the centre of the galaxy. Stars that originate outside of the bulge are accreted into it early in its formation within 3 Gyrs so that these stars have high [alpha/Fe] as well as having a high total energy reflecting their accretion to the centre of the galaxy. Therefore, higher total energy is a good indicator for finding accreted stars. The bulges of the simulated galaxies formed through multiple mergers separated by about a Gyr. Since [alpha/Fe] is sensitive to the first few Gyrs of star formation history, stars that formed during mergers at different epochs show different [alpha/Fe]. We show that the [Mg/Fe] against star formation time relation can be very useful to identify a multiple merger bulge formation scenario, provided there is sufficiently good age information available. Our simulations also show that stars formed during one of the merger events retain a systematically prograde rotation at the final time. This demonstrates that the orbit of the ancient merger that helped to form the bulge could still remain in the kinematics of bulge stars.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, MNRAS in pres