Fast full N-body simulations of generic modified gravity: conformal coupling models

TL;DR

MG-GLAM is a highly optimized N-body simulation code that enables rapid and accurate modeling of various modified gravity theories, facilitating large-scale cosmological studies and survey preparations.

Contribution

The paper introduces MG-GLAM, a fast, versatile N-body simulation code tailored for multiple conformal coupling modified gravity models, with significant speed improvements over previous methods.

Findings

Achieves over a hundredfold speedup compared to earlier codes.

Accurately predicts matter power spectrum and halo abundance.

Successfully models f(R), symmetron, and coupled quintessence MG models.

Abstract

We present MG-GLAM, a code developed for the very fast production of full $N$-body cosmological simulations in modified gravity (MG) models. We describe the implementation, numerical tests and first results of a large suite of cosmological simulations for three classes of MG models with conformal coupling terms: the $f(R)$ gravity, symmetron and coupled quintessence models. Derived from the parallel particle-mesh code GLAM, MG-GLAM incorporates an efficient multigrid relaxation technique to solve the characteristic nonlinear partial differential equations of these models. For $f(R)$ gravity, we have included new variants to diversify the model behaviour, and we have tailored the relaxation algorithms to these to maintain high computational efficiency. In a companion paper, we describe versions of this code developed for derivative coupling MG models, including the Vainshtein- and K-mouflage-type models. MG-GLAM can model the prototypes for most MG models of interest, and is broad and versatile. The code is highly optimised, with a tremendous speedup of a factor of more than a hundred compared with earlier $N$-body codes, while still giving accurate predictions of the matter power spectrum and dark matter halo abundance. MG-GLAM is ideal for the generation of large numbers of MG simulations that can be used in the construction of mock galaxy catalogues and the production of accurate emulators for ongoing and future galaxy surveys.