Supersonic, cold streams may be a mechanism for feeding massive halos at high redshift -- these streams, however, are affected by a supersonic version of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI), which can eventually leads to stream disruption. This images shows idealized models of magnetized cold streams designed to study their disruption, survival times, and mixing rates with the circumgalactic medium. Each column is a different test, with pure hydro on the left, and magnetized cases on the right, with time progressing from top to bottom.

Methods: Athena++ code