2019: Cosmological Simulation
Description
Recent additions to the Hardware/Hybrid Accelerated Cosmology Code (HACC) [Ref 1] framework allow for more detailed cosmology simulations. With the addition of baryonic matter [Ref 2], and a mechanism for designating particles as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), new forms of visualization are now possible.
These simulations are used to study the impact that feedback from AGN have on their surrounding matter distribution. AGNs are associated with violent bursts of energy that result from matter accretion onto supermassive black holes forming at the center of galaxies. Visualizing the temperature field of the baryon particles shows how this energy is imparted to the surrounding gas and affects subsequent structure formation. One can also examine entropy, which is a physical quantity acting as a thermodynamic record of heating and cooling processes during structure formation. Hence, the entropy contains a wealth of information regarding the various astrophysical processes that occurred during the formation of massive objects. Cosmological simulations that model feedback from AGN as well as other astrophysical phenomena including radiative cooling, star formation, and supernovae feedback are critical in understanding the structure formation history of the universe. The dataset is from a CRK-HACC cosmological simulation containing 2×643 dark matter plus baryon particles in a cubic box of side length 64 Mpc/h. Particles contain multiple fields, including position, velocity, temperature, etc. The simulation evolved from z = 200 (universe was 5 million years old) to z = 0 (today), thus multiple timesteps are available to visualize time evolution.
These simulations are used to study the impact that feedback from AGN have on their surrounding matter distribution. AGNs are associated with violent bursts of energy that result from matter accretion onto supermassive black holes forming at the center of galaxies. Visualizing the temperature field of the baryon particles shows how this energy is imparted to the surrounding gas and affects subsequent structure formation. One can also examine entropy, which is a physical quantity acting as a thermodynamic record of heating and cooling processes during structure formation. Hence, the entropy contains a wealth of information regarding the various astrophysical processes that occurred during the formation of massive objects. Cosmological simulations that model feedback from AGN as well as other astrophysical phenomena including radiative cooling, star formation, and supernovae feedback are critical in understanding the structure formation history of the universe. The dataset is from a CRK-HACC cosmological simulation containing 2×643 dark matter plus baryon particles in a cubic box of side length 64 Mpc/h. Particles contain multiple fields, including position, velocity, temperature, etc. The simulation evolved from z = 200 (universe was 5 million years old) to z = 0 (today), thus multiple timesteps are available to visualize time evolution.
Date
2019
Items
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2019 Contest Website Archive
This contains an archive of the contest website in both PDF and HTML formats.