Title: The Aemulus Project. I. Numerical Simulations for Precision Cosmology

Abstract

The rapidly growing statistical precision of galaxy surveys has led to a need for ever more precise predictions of the observables used to constrain cosmological and galaxy formation models. The primary avenue through which such predictions will be obtained is suites of numerical simulations. These simulations must span the relevant model parameter spaces, be large enough to obtain the precision demanded by upcoming data, and be thoroughly validated in order to ensure accuracy. In this paper, we present one such suite of simulations, forming the basis for the Aemulus Project, a collaboration devoted to precision emulation of galaxy survey observables. We have run a set of 75 (1.05 h -1 Gpc)3 simulations with mass resolution and force softening of $$3.51\times {10}^{10}\left({{\rm{\Omega }}}_{m}/0.3\right)\,{h}^{-1}\,{M}_{\odot }$$ and 20 h -1 kpc, respectively, in 47 different wCDM cosmologies spanning the range of parameter space allowed by the combination of recent cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillation, and Type Ia supernova results. We present convergence tests of several observables including spherical overdensity halo mass functions, galaxy projected correlation functions, galaxy clustering in redshift space, and matter and halo correlation functions and power spectra. We show that these statistics are converged to 1% (2%) or to the sample variance of the statistic, whichever is larger, for halos with more than 500 (200) particles, respectively, and scales of r > 200 h -1 kpc in real space or k ~ 3 h Mpc-1 in harmonic space for z ≤ 1. We find that the dominant source of uncertainty comes from varying the particle loading of the simulations. This leads to large systematic errors for statistics using halos with fewer than 200 particles and scales smaller than k ~ 4 h Mpc-1. We provide the halo catalogs and snapshots detailed in this work to the community at https://AemulusProject.github.io.

Authors:

DeRose, Joseph  ^[1];

• Search DOE PAGES for author "DeRose, Joseph"
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-0728-0960"

Wechsler, Risa H.  ^[1];

• Search DOE PAGES for author "Wechsler, Risa H."
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0003-2229-011X"

Tinker, Jeremy L. ^[2]; Becker, Matthew R.  ^[3];

• Search DOE PAGES for author "Becker, Matthew R."
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0001-7774-2246"

Mao, Yao-Yuan  ^[4];

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• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-1200-0820"

McClintock, Thomas ^[5]; McLaughlin, Sean  ^[1];

• Search DOE PAGES for author "McLaughlin, Sean"
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0002-7042-6424"

Rozo, Eduardo ^[6]; Zhai, Zhongxu  ^[2]

• Search DOE PAGES for author "Zhai, Zhongxu"
• Search DOE PAGES for ORCID "0000-0001-7984-5476"

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Kavli Inst. for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and Department of Physics; SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States). Dept. of Particle Physics and Astrophysics
2. New York Univ. (NYU), NY (United States). Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Dept. of Physics
3. Stanford Univ., CA (United States). Kavli Inst. for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and Department of Physics; SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States). Dept. of Particle Physics and Astrophysics; Civis Analytics, Chicago, IL (United States)
4. Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy and the Pittsburgh Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology Center (PITT PACC)
5. Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States). Dept. of Physics
6. Univ. of Arizona, Tuscon, ZA (United States). Dept. of Physics

Publication Date:

Wed Apr 10 00:00:00 EDT 2019

Research Org.:

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE; National Science Foundation (NSF); Sloan Foundation

OSTI Identifier:

1526938

Alternate Identifier(s):

OSTI ID: 1542896

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC02-76SF00515; AC02-05CH11231; AST-1211889; SC0015975; FG-2016-6443

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

The Astrophysical Journal (Online)

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal (Online); Journal Volume: 875; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 1538-4357

Publisher:

Institute of Physics (IOP)

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS