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Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars

Abstract

The cold dark matter model has become the leading theoretical picture for the formation of structure in the Universe. This model, together with the theory of cosmic inflation, makes a clear prediction for the initial conditions for structure formation and predicts that structures grow hierarchically through gravitational instability. Testing this model requires that the precise measurements delivered by galaxy surveys can be compared to robust and equally precise theoretical calculations. Here we present a simulation of the growth of dark matter structure using 2,1603 particles, following them from redshift z = 127 to the present in a cube-shaped region 2.230 billion lightyears on a side. In postprocessing, we also follow the formation and evolution of the galaxies and quasars. We show that baryon-induced features in the initial conditions of the Universe are reflected in distorted form in the low-redshift galaxy distribution, an effect that can be used to constrain the nature of dark energy with future generations of observational surveys of galaxies.

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Figure 1: The dark matter density field on various scales.
Figure 2: Differential halo number density as a function of mass and epoch.
Figure 3: Environment of a ‘first quasar candidate’ at high and low redshifts.
Figure 4: Galaxy two-point correlation function, ξ(r ), at the present epoch as a function of separation r.
Figure 5: Galaxy clustering as a function of luminosity and colour.
Figure 6: Power spectra of the dark matter and galaxy distributions in the baryon oscillation region.

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Acknowledgements

The computations reported here were performed at the Rechenzentrum der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Garching, Germany.

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Correspondence to Volker Springel.

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Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Methods

This details the physical model used to compute the galaxy population, and gives a short summary of the simulation method. Where appropriate, further references to relevant literature for our methodology are included. (PDF 255 kb)

Supplementary Video

This computer animation visualizes the dark matter distribution of the simulated universe at the present epoch, in a slice of thickness 15 Mpc/h. A zoom over several decades in length-scale onto one of the many rich clusters of galaxies is shown, highlighting the morphology of structure of the universe on different scales as well as the large dynamic range of the millennium simulation. (To play this high-resolution movie on Windows or Apple computers, you may have to install the `divx'-codec, available for free at www.divx.com). (AVI 11065 kb)

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Springel, V., White, S., Jenkins, A. et al. Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars. Nature 435, 629–636 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03597

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