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How to Simulate the Universe in a Computer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2013

Alexander Knebe
Alexander Knebe*
Affiliation:
Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University, Hawthorn VIC 3122, Australia Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam (AIP), 14482 Postdam, Germany. Email: aknebe@aip.de
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Abstract

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In this contribution a broad overview of the methodologies of cosmological N-body simulations and a short introduction explaining the general idea behind such simulations is presented. After explaining how to set up the initial conditions using a set of N particles two (diverse) techniques are presented for evolving these particles forward in time under the influence of their self-gravity. One technique (tree codes) is solely based upon a sophistication of the direct particle–particle summation whereas the other method relies on the continuous (de-)construction of arbitrarily shaped grids and is realized in adaptive mesh refinement codes.

Keywords

cosmology: theorycosmology: dark mattermethods: N-body simulationsmethods: numerical
Type
Gravity Workshop 2004
Information
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia , Volume 22 , Issue 3: Featuring Gravity Workshop 2004 , 2005 , pp. 184 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Astronomical Society of Australia 2005

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