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Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia Society
Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
RESEARCH ARTICLE

How to Simulate the Universe in a Computer


Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 22(3) 184 - 189
Published: 31 August 2005

Abstract

In this contribution a broad overview of the methodologies of cosmological N-body simulations and a short introduction explaining the general idea behind such simulations is presented. After explaining how to set up the initial conditions using a set of N particles two (diverse) techniques are presented for evolving these particles forward in time under the influence of their self-gravity. One technique (tree codes) is solely based upon a sophistication of the direct particle–particle summation whereas the other method relies on the continuous (de-)construction of arbitrarily shaped grids and is realized in adaptive mesh refinement codes.

Keywords: cosmology: theory – cosmology: dark matter – methods: N-body simulations – methods: numerical

https://doi.org/10.1071/AS04059

© ASA 2005

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