Particle-Mesh code for cosmological simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a publicly available Particle-Mesh N-body simulation code for cosmological models, offering flexible parameters, analysis routines, and tested performance on standard workstations.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, adaptable Particle-Mesh code package for cosmological simulations, including initial conditions, analysis tools, and test results, accessible to the community.

Findings

Able to run large simulations within days on standard workstations

Supports various cosmological parameters and models

Successfully tested on multiple hardware platforms

Abstract

Particle-Mesh (PM) codes are still very useful tools for testing predictions of cosmological models in cases when extra high resolution is not very important. We release for public use a cosmological PM N-body code. We provide a complete package of routines needed to set initial conditions, to run the code, and to analyze the results. The package allows you to simulate models with numerous combinations of parameters: open/flat/closed background, with or without the cosmological constant, different values of the Hubble constant, with or without hot neutrinos, tilted or non-tilted initial spectra, different amount of baryons. Routines are included to measure the power spectrum and the density distribution function in your simulations, and a bound-density-maxima code for halo finding. We also provide results of test runs. A simulation with 256^3 mesh and 128^3 particles can be done in a couple of days on a typical workstation (70Mb of RAM are needed). To run simulations with 800^3 mesh and 256^3 particles one needs a computer with 1Gb memory and 1Gb disk space. The code has been successfully tested on an HP workstation and on a Sun workstation running Solaris. Most of the files (not tests) can be obtained from ftp://astro.nmsu.edu/pub/aklypin/PMCODE The package can be downloaded from http://astro.nmsu.edu/~aklypin/PM/pmcode/index.html We provide this tool as a service to the astronomical community, but we cannot guarantee results or publications.