Introducing the DREAMS Project: DaRk mattEr and Astrophysics with Machine learning and Simulations

TL;DR

The DREAMS project develops extensive cosmological simulations to explore how alternative dark matter models influence galaxy formation, using machine learning to analyze the effects and uncertainties in small-scale astrophysical observations.

Contribution

This paper introduces two new suites of Warm Dark Matter simulations with varied parameters, enabling detailed analysis of dark matter and baryonic physics impacts on galaxy properties.

Findings

Simulation suites demonstrate how dark matter and baryonic physics affect galaxy formation.

Emulators and CNNs effectively disentangle dark matter effects from baryonic feedback.

Framework supports testing various dark matter models against small-scale observations.

Abstract

We introduce the DREAMS project, an innovative approach to understanding the astrophysical implications of alternative dark matter models and their effects on galaxy formation and evolution. The DREAMS project will ultimately comprise thousands of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations that simultaneously vary over dark matter physics, astrophysics, and cosmology in modeling a range of systems -- from galaxy clusters to ultra-faint satellites. Such extensive simulation suites can provide adequate training sets for machine-learning-based analyses. This paper introduces two new cosmological hydrodynamical suites of Warm Dark Matter, each comprised of 1024 simulations generated using the Arepo code. One suite consists of uniform-box simulations covering a $(25~h^{-1}~{\rm M}_\odot)^3$ volume, while the other consists of Milky Way zoom-ins with sufficient resolution to capture the properties of classical satellites. For each simulation, the Warm Dark Matter particle mass is varied along with the initial density field and several parameters controlling the strength of baryonic feedback within the IllustrisTNG model. We provide two examples, separately utilizing emulators and Convolutional Neural Networks, to demonstrate how such simulation suites can be used to disentangle the effects of dark matter and baryonic physics on galactic properties. The DREAMS project can be extended further to include different dark matter models, galaxy formation physics, and astrophysical targets. In this way, it will provide an unparalleled opportunity to characterize uncertainties on predictions for small-scale observables, leading to robust predictions for testing the particle physics nature of dark matter on these scales.