Santi Roca: Galaxy Formation through AGORA and Arrakihs-HARKONENS Cosmological Simulations

Tuesday 21 Oct 2025, 13:15 → 14:00 Europe/Stockholm

FB54 (AlbaNova Main Building)

In this talk, I will present the AGORA and Arrakihs-HARKONENS projects, two large international efforts in cosmological simulations coordinated from Sweden. Both collaborations aim to improve our understanding of galaxy formation and to assess how numerical methods and different implementations of physical processes affect the results. I will summarize recent findings on satellite galaxy populations around Milky Way–mass systems, the formation of galactic discs, the properties of the circumgalactic medium, and the emergence of stellar streams, and I will conclude with an outlook on ongoing and future work.

About the speaker: Santi Roca-Fàbrega is currently a research engineer at the Division of Astrophysics, Lund University. Originally from Catalonia, he obtained his PhD in Astrophysics at the University of Barcelona (2014), where he focused on the production and study of simulations of Milky Way-like galaxies within the Gaia-ESA team. His research covers a wide range of topics in galaxy formation and evolution, including cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, galactic dynamics and kinematics, the circumgalactic medium, stellar streams, and the role of bars and spiral arms in disc galaxies. He co-coordinates major international collaborations such as the AGORA project and Arrakihs-HARKONENS, and has held research post-doctoral positions in Israel, Spain, and Mexico before moving to Sweden in 2023. Alongside his academic work, he is actively involved in outreach, giving public lectures, organizing telescope workshops, and promoting astronomy through community associations in Lund and abroad.