A fast particle-mesh simulation of non-linear cosmological structure formation with massive neutrinos

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fast, accurate particle-mesh simulation method for non-linear cosmological structure formation that effectively includes massive neutrinos, improving speed and precision over previous models.

Contribution

The authors develop a novel approach to incorporate neutrino particles into FastPM, achieving percent-level accuracy in non-linear regimes and reducing shot noise with a quasi-random sampling algorithm.

Findings

Achieves percent-level accuracy in matter power spectra for $M_\nu \lesssim 0.6$eV

Simulation converges in approximately 25 steps from redshift 99

Neutrino particles add only 5-20% runtime per step for large simulations

Abstract

Quasi-N-body simulations, such as FastPM, provide a fast way to simulate cosmological structure formation, but have yet to adequately include the effects of massive neutrinos. We present a method to include neutrino particles in FastPM, enabling computation of the CDM and total matter power spectra to percent-level accuracy in the non-linear regime. The CDM-neutrino cross-power can also be computed at a sufficient accuracy to constrain cosmological observables. To avoid the shot noise that typically plagues neutrino particle simulations, we employ a quasi-random algorithm to sample the relevant Fermi-Dirac distribution when setting the initial neutrino thermal velocities. We additionally develop an effective distribution function to describe a set of non-degenerate neutrinos as a single particle to speed up non-degenerate simulations. The simulation is accurate for the full range of physical interest, $M_\nu \lesssim 0.6$eV, and applicable to redshifts $z\lesssim2$. Such accuracy can be achieved by initializing particles with the two-fluid approximation transfer functions (using the REPS package). Convergence can be reached in $\sim 25$ steps, with a starting redshift of $z=99$. Probing progressively smaller scales only requires an increase in the number of CDM particles being simulated, while the number of neutrino particles can remain fixed at a value less than or similar to the number of CDM particles. In turn, the percentage increase in runtime-per-step due to neutrino particles is between $\sim 5-20\%$ for runs with $1024^3$ CDM particles, and decreases as the number of CDM particles is increased. The code has been made publicly available, providing an invaluable resource to produce fast predictions for cosmological surveys and studying reconstruction.