LasDamas

Large Suite of Dark Matter Simulations (LasDamas) is a project to run a large suite of cosmological N-body simulations that follow the evolution of dark matter in the universe. The simulations are designed to model the clustering of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) galaxies in a wide luminosity range, with the goal of assisting in the modeling of galaxy clustering measurements. Specifically, The LasDamas simulations will be used to construct detailed mock galaxy catalogs by placing artificial galaxies inside dark matter halos. The large number of resulting mock catalogs will allow us to (i) estimate statistical errors and covariances in measurements of galaxy clustering with unprecedented precision; (ii) quantify systematic uncertainties in these measurements; (iii) test and refine the theoretical models that are used to fit to the data.

In addition to enabling the analysis of SDSS data, the unprecedented statistical power of the LasDamas simulations will also be useful for a number of theoretical investigations of dark matter halo properties. We plan to study the clustering of halos as a function of mass and other properties, the internal density and velocity profiles of halos, their three-dimensional shapes, and their mass-accretion and merger histories. Quantifying these properties and their correlations with each other at high signal-to-noise will help improve halo models and will be invaluable for helping to understand the physics of galaxy formation.

Andreas Berlind

Michael Busha

Cameron McBride

Jeff Gardner

Roman Scoccimarro

Frank van den Bosch

Risa Wechsler