Cosmological Simulations for Large-scale Sky Surveys

• Code: HACC
• Science Domain: Cosmology
• PI: Salman Habib, Argonne National Laboratory

Description

Today’s land-and-satellite-based telescopes are able to capture huge amounts of data on galaxies throughout the observable universe, and researchers are using this data to answer questions about the nature of dark energy, dark matter, and the formation of the universe. However, in order to understand how galaxies form, researchers need to compare observational data with cosmological simulations by modeling the large-scale structure and distribution of matter during the evolution of the universe over 13 billion years. Salman Habib’s team is using its Hardware/Hybrid Accelerated Cosmology Code on DOE leadership computers to conduct unprecedented cosmological structure simulations at resolutions needed for modern-day galactic surveys. The results of these simulations will be used for a diverse set of scientific investigations, like strong and weak lensing maps, and synthetic sky surveys. Over the next decade more realistic synthetic sky catalogs will be produced by adding the physics of gas dynamics and star formation along with dark matter—a level of realism that cannot be achieved on Titan.