HLRB Project pr23xe
Non-linear clustering growth in non-standard cosmologies
Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik mit Universitäts-Sternwarte
Proposing Institution
Institut für Astronomie und Astrophysik mit Universitäts-Sternwarte
Project Manager
Dr. Stefanie Phleps
Giessenbachstraße
85748 Garching
Abstract
Non-linear clustering growth in non-standard cosmologiesIn the last decade, strong evidence for the existance of a dark energy filling the universe has been detected, the origin and nature of which are still not clear.We intend to start a new project that will investigate the influence of the dark energy equation of state on the growth of structures in the universe. This project will be a joint collaboration between the large scale structure group (lead by Dr.Stefanie Phleps) of the OPINAS (Optical and Interpretative Astronomy) group (lead by Prof.Dr.Ralf Bender) at MPE, and the theory group at the USM (lead by Prof.Dr. Andreas Burkert).Dark energy influences the size evolution of the universe, which can be determined by using the imprint of the baryonic acoustic oscillations in the galaxy distribution as a standard ruler. Dark energy also influences the structure growth, which becomes highly non-linear at low redshifts (z<1). BAOs can only be used as a standard ruler if the non-linear structure growth is well understood. Since state-of-the-art perturbation theory breaks down at low redshifts, it is important to investigate the non-linear structure growth in numerical N-body simulations. In order to compare the results with observations, the simulated volumes have to be large enough to compensate the effects of photometric redshift errors. Up to now no such a simulation does exist in other than the standard cosmology. Therefore we propose to use a modified version of GADGET-2 to run cosmological simulations in a 1.3Gpc^3 box, for three different equation of state parameters of the dark energy: the fiducial LambdaCDM, a quintessence model with w=-0.9, and a phantom model with w=-1.1. Using the analysis tools we have already developed, we will investigate how well we are able to (re-)derive the (known) cosmological parameters. Participating scientists:Andreas Burkert, Peter Johansson, Baptiste Meneux, Francesco Montesano, Thorsten Naab, Ludwig Oser, Stefanie Phleps, Ariel Sanchez, Holger Schlagenhaufer
