Public data release of the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations of
  galaxy formation
  We describe a public data release of the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in
simulations of galaxy formation, available at
http://flathub.flatironinstitute.org/fire, from the Feedback In Realistic
Environments (FIRE) project. The FIRE-2 simulations achieve parsec-scale
resolution to explicitly model the multi-phase interstellar medium while
implementing direct models for stellar evolution and feedback, including
stellar winds, core-collapse and Ia supernovae, radiation pressure,
photoionization, and photoelectric heating. We release complete snapshots from
3 suites of simulations. The first comprises 20 simulations that zoom in on 14
Milky Way-mass galaxies, 5 SMC/LMC-mass galaxies, and 4 lower-mass galaxies
including 1 ultra-faint; we release snapshots at z = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. The second
comprises 4 more massive galaxies simulated to z = 1, with snapshots at z = 1,
2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Finally, a high-redshift suite comprises 22 simulations at z = 5
and 6. Each simulation also includes dozens of resolved lower-mass (satellite)
galaxies in its zoom-in region. Snapshots include all stored properties for all
dark matter, gas, and star particles, including 11 elemental abundances for
stars and gas, and formation times (ages) of star particles. We also release
accompanying (sub)halo catalogs, which include galaxy properties and member
star particles. For the simulations to z = 0, including all Milky Way-mass
galaxies, we release an "ex-situ" flag for star particles, pointers to track
particles across snapshots, catalogs of stellar streams, and multipole basis
expansions for the halo mass distributions. We describe several publicly
available python packages for reading and analyzing these simulations.
