Numerical simulations of the dark universe: State of the art and the next decade
Abstract
Truly massive dark matter-only simulations are being conducted on national supercomputing centers, employing from several billion to over half a trillion particles to simulate the formation and evolution of cosmologically representative volumes (cosmic scale) or to zoom in on individual halos (cluster and galactic scale). These simulations cost millions of core-hours, require tens to hundreds of terabytes of memory, and use up to petabytes of disk storage. Predictions from such simulations touch on almost every aspect of dark matter and dark energy studies, and we give a comprehensive overview of this connection. We also discuss the limitations of the cold and collisionless DM-only approach, and describe in some detail efforts to include different particle physics as well as baryonic physics in cosmological galaxy formation simulations, including a discussion of recent results highlighting how the distribution of dark matter in halos may be altered. We end with an outlook for the next decade, presenting our view of how the field can be expected to progress.
- Publication:
-
Physics of the Dark Universe
- Pub Date:
- November 2012
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.dark.2012.10.002
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1209.5745
- Bibcode:
- 2012PDU.....1...50K
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - Galaxy Astrophysics;
- High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
- E-Print:
- 54 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables