2026/07/17 by Patrick R. Wells, Michael Buelhmann, Patricia Larsen +11
#astro-ph.IM #astro-ph.CO
Cosmology is a precision observational science, and large simulations are necessary components of many analyses. These simulations are computationally expensive and produce massive, complex datasets; sharing them widely -- to enable further explorations, comparison with observations, and communication with general audiences -- is crucial to realizing their scientific value. In this paper, we introduce the OpenCosmo project, which provides flexible access to, and analysis of, flagship cosmological simulations performed with HACC. A web-based portal (https://opencosmo.science) serves custom subsets -- halo catalogs, profiles, particles, galaxy catalogs, and lightcone catalogs and maps -- from simulations including the two-trillion-particle Frontier-E gravity-only run, Last Journey, Discovery, and a 64-member hydrodynamic suite. A companion Python toolkit analyzes the returned data and scales without modification from laptop-sized subsets to full simulations on supercomputers. OpenCosmo supports multiple levels of interaction, from browser-based search and download to programmatic and AI-agent-driven workflows, by integrating with existing high-performance computing and data infrastructure. Its architecture, built on Globus services, provides a scalable and adaptable framework that can be extended to other scientific domains seeking to couple data sharing with computational capability.