cosmICweb: Cosmological Initial Conditions for Zoom-in Simulations in the Cloud

TL;DR

cosmICweb is an online platform that stores, analyzes, and provides initial conditions for zoom-in cosmological simulations, facilitating easy selection and reproduction of specific objects like galaxies and clusters.

Contribution

This paper introduces the first web-based database and interface for cosmological initial conditions, supporting multiple simulations and enabling reproducibility.

Findings

Supports all objects in the EAGLE simulation database.

Enables reproduction of Auriga simulations.

Provides a user-friendly web portal for initial condition selection.

Abstract

We present the online service cosmICweb (COSMological Initial Conditions on the WEB) - the first database and web interface to store, analyze, and disseminate initial conditions for zoom simulations of objects forming in cosmological simulations: from galaxy clusters to galaxies and more. Specifically, we store compressed information about the Lagrangian proto-halo patches for all objects in a typical simulation merger tree along with properties of the halo/galaxy across cosmic time. This enables a convenient web-based selection of the desired zoom region for an object fitting user-specified selection criteria. The information about the region can then be used with the MUSIC code to generate the zoom ICs for the simulation. In addition to some other simulations, we currently support all objects in the EAGLE simulation database, so that for example the Auriga simulations are easily reproduced, which we demonstrate explicitly. The framework is extensible to include other simulations through an API that can be added to an existing database structure and with which cosmICweb can then be interfaced. We make the web portal and database publicly available to the community.