Speaker: Bridget Falck
Location: Invited seminar, University of Sussex
The Indra suite of cosmological N-body simulations will provide excellent statistics of the large scale features in the distribution of dark matter while at the same time resolving the nonlinear evolution of structure, all within an unprecedented peta-scale database. Among other things, Indra will allow us to quantify the statistical uncertainties of large surveys and study the detailed evolution of the cosmic web. I will present an overview of the Indra simulations and some tools we are developing to manage a peta-byte of data, then present examples of Indra-enabled science from my thesis work. I will first show how a logarithmic density variable improves the relation between the density field and the divergence of the displacement field, giving a significantly tighter relation even on nonlinear scales. Then I will present the ORIGAMI method of identifying structures (halos, filaments, walls, and voids) in simulations by finding folds in phase-space, and I will compare ORIGAMI to standard Spherical Overdensity and Friends of Friends halo-finders.