HLRB Project pr28mu
SOLARSURF - Solar Surface Flow Simulations at Ultra-High Resolution
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysik
Proposing Institution
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysik
Project Manager
PD Dr. Friedrich Kupka
Karl-Schwarzschild Str. 1
85748 Garching
Abstract
Structure formation in the Universe is dominated by a mysterious dark matter component, which is aboutsix times more abundant than all the known matter made up of standard model particles. Most of thepast research has focused on the assumption that the putative dark particle should be thermally cold andmassive. However, there are some observational clues that this model has shortcomings on small scales.One possible solution from particle physics is for the dark particle to be lighter and retain some thermalvelocity. This scenario is dubbed Warm Dark Matter (WDM). We propose to explore cosmic structureformation in the WDM scenario through a suite of ambitious high resolution N-body simulations. Thesesimulations will be aimed at uncovering the details of how structure formation behaves from the very largestscale structures, down to the free-streaming mass scale and out to high redshift for the first objects. Thiswill enable us to greatly extend our knowledge about large and small scale structures in WDM and alsomixed cold plus warm dark matter (C+WDM) cosmologies. This work will also help direct and indirect dark matterdetection experiments to calculate expected cross-sections for these particle candidates.
