Calibrated, cosmological hydrodynamical simulations with variable IMFs I: Method and effect on global galaxy scaling relations

Abstract: The recently inferred variations in the stellar initial mass function (IMF) among local high-mass early-type galaxies may require a reinterpretation of observations of galaxy populations and may have important consequences for the predictions of models of galaxy formation and evolution. We present a new pair of cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations based on the EAGLE model that self-consistently adopt an IMF that respectively becomes bottom- or top-heavy in high-pressure environments for individual star-forming gas particles. In such models, the excess stellar mass-to-light ($M/L$) ratio with respect to a reference IMF is increased due to an overabundance of low-mass dwarf stars or stellar remnants, respectively. Crucially, both pressure-dependent IMFs have been calibrated to reproduce the observed trends of increasing excess $M/L$ with central stellar velocity dispersion ($\sigma_e$) in early-type galaxies, while maintaining agreement with the observables used to calibrate the EAGLE model, namely the galaxy luminosity function, half-light radii of late-type galaxies, and black hole masses. We find that while the $M/L$ excess is a good measure of the IMF for low-mass slope variations, it depends strongly on the age of the stellar population for high-mass slope variations. The normalization of the [Mg/Fe]$-\sigma_e$ relation is decreased (increased) for bottom- (top-)heavy IMF variations, while the slope is not strongly affected. Bottom-heavy variations have little impact on galaxy metallicities, half-light radii of early-type galaxies, or star formation rates, while top-heavy variations significantly increase these quantities for high-mass galaxies, leading to tension with observations.