Data and Tools

A halo from a warm dark matter simulation. The halos are red and the empty areas around them are blue.

Cosmological simulations

Our group performs some of the largest cosmological N-body simulations in the world, with a focus on simulations that can directly answer questions in modern survey cosmology. We have publicly available data from several of these projects, including the recent Aemulus Project and the previous LasDamas, Dark Sky, and UNITSIM efforts, and a variety of high resolution zoom-ins including the Symphony and MWest suites.

A subhalo being identified. The subhalo's matter is shown with a range of pink, yellow, and purple colors. There is an inset panel showing a zoomed-in veiw of the subhalos' bound matter.

Analysis tools

Accurate analysis tools for cosmological simulations are essential to our work. Our group has pioneered accurate halo finding [rockstar, symfind] and merger tree tools [consistent trees], as well as tools for connecting galaxies to halos [abundance matching, universe machine] and analyzing the properties of halos and the matter distribution. We have also developed a number of tools for gravitational lensing calculations [paltas] [overjero].

An example mock universe that Cardinal can generate. The left side shows a mock DES footprint in red and purple and the right shows a zoomed-in view of that footprint in yellow and blue.

Simulated sky surveys

The current and next generation of cosmological sky surveys depend on the predictions of simulated sky surveys that include realistic galaxy populations. The most recent simulation suite we have produced for very large survey volumes (e.g. DES, DESI, LSST) can be found at the Cardinal Simulation Site. We are currently active on simulations for the Roman survey and on new survey simulations of the Milky Way (e.g. DESI, Rubin, Via, Gaia, and Roman).