2012/09/25 by M. Kuhlen, Mark Vogelsberger, Kuhlen, Michael +3 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · Computer Science · #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Computational Physics and Python Applications
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1209.5745
We present a review of the current state of the art of cosmological dark\nmatter simulations, with particular emphasis on the implications for dark\nmatter detection efforts and studies of dark energy. This review is intended\nboth for particle physicists, who may find the cosmological simulation\nliterature opaque or confusing, and for astro-physicists, who may not be\nfamiliar with the role of simulations for observational and experimental probes\nof dark matter and dark energy. Our work is complementary to the contribution\nby M. Baldi in this issue, which focuses on the treatment of dark energy and\ncosmic acceleration in dedicated N-body simulations. Truly massive dark\nmatter-only simulations are being conducted on national supercomputing centers,\nemploying from several billion to over half a trillion particles to simulate\nthe formation and evolution of cosmologically representative volumes (cosmic\nscale) or to zoom in on individual halos (cluster and galactic scale). These\nsimulations cost millions of core-hours, require tens to hundreds of terabytes\nof memory, and use up to petabytes of disk storage. The field is quite\ninternationally diverse, with top simulations having been run in China, France,\nGermany, Korea, Spain, and the USA. Predictions from such simulations touch on\nalmost every aspect of dark matter and dark energy studies, and we give a\ncomprehensive overview of this connection. We also discuss the limitations of\nthe cold and collisionless DM-only approach, and describe in some detail\nefforts to include different particle physics as well as baryonic physics in\ncosmological galaxy formation simulations, including a discussion of recent\nresults highlighting how the distribution of dark matter in halos may be\naltered. We end with an outlook for the next decade, presenting our view of how\nthe field can be expected to progress. (abridged)\n