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Title: CosmoDC2: A Synthetic Sky Catalog for Dark Energy Science with LSST

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal. Supplement Series (Online)
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This paper introduces cosmoDC2, a large synthetic galaxy catalog designed to support precision dark energy science with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). CosmoDC2 is the starting point for the second data challenge (DC2) carried out by the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC). The catalog is based on a trillion-particle, 4.225 Gpc^3 box cosmological N-body simulation, the `Outer Rim' run. It covers 440 deg^2 of sky area to a redshift of z=3 and is complete to a magnitude depth of 28 in the r-band. Each galaxy is characterized by a multitude of properties including stellar mass, morphology, spectral energy distributions, broadband filter magnitudes, host halo information and weak lensing shear. The size and complexity of cosmoDC2 requires an efficient catalog generation methodology; our approach is based on a new hybrid technique that combines data-driven empirical approaches with semi-analytic galaxy modeling. A wide range of observation-based validation tests has been implemented to ensure that cosmoDC2 enables the science goals of the planned LSST DESC DC2 analyses. This paper also represents the official release of the cosmoDC2 data set, including an efficient reader that facilitates interaction with the data.

Research Organization:
Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC); SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Scientific User Facilities Division
Contributing Organization:
The LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0017860; SC0010118; SC0010008; AC02-06CH11357; HST-HF2-51441.001; NAS5-26555; AC02-05CH11231; AC02-76SF00515; PHY-1607611; AST-95-09298; AST-0071048; AST-0507428; AST-0507483; NNG04GC89G
OSTI ID:
1593661
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1599073; OSTI ID: 1634013; OSTI ID: 1755643
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal. Supplement Series (Online), Vol. 245, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4365
Publisher:
American Astronomical Society/IOPCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 40 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Ray-tracing through the Millennium Simulation: Born corrections and lens-lens coupling in cosmic shear and galaxy-galaxy lensing text January 2008
Constraints on the relationship between stellar mass and halo mass at low and high redshift text January 2009
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The Rockstar Phase-Space Temporal Halo Finder and the Velocity Offsets of Cluster Cores text January 2011
The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey: Design, Observations, Data Reduction, and Redshifts text January 2012
Intrinsic galaxy shapes and alignments I: Measuring and modelling COSMOS intrinsic galaxy ellipticities text January 2012
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Why Baryons Matter: The Kinematics of Dwarf Spheroidal Satellites text January 2012
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The AGORA High-Resolution Galaxy Simulations Comparison Project text January 2013
Calibration of semi-analytic models of galaxy formation using Particle Swarm Optimization text January 2013
The MassiveBlack-II Simulation: The Evolution of Halos and Galaxies to z~0 text January 2014
Galaxy formation in the Planck Cosmology - I. Matching the observed evolution of star formation rates, colours and stellar masses text January 2014
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A unified multi-wavelength model of galaxy formation text January 2015
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Dark Energy Survey Year 1 Results: Cosmological Constraints from Galaxy Clustering and Weak Lensing text January 2017
The Borg Cube Simulation: Cosmological Hydrodynamics with CRK-SPH text January 2018
Galaxy Clusters in Hubble Volume Simulations: Cosmological Constraints from Sky Survey Populations text January 2001
The Halo Occupation Distribution and the Physics of Galaxy Formation text January 2002
Dust and Nebular Emission. I. Models for Normal Galaxies text January 2003
The Dark Side of the Halo Occupation Distribution text January 2003
HEALPix -- a Framework for High Resolution Discretization, and Fast Analysis of Data Distributed on the Sphere text January 2004
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