Particle loads for cosmological simulations with equal-mass dark matter and baryonic particles

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Hauptverfasser: Liao, Shihong, Liu, Yizhou, Zheng, Haonan, Li, Ming, Wang, Jie, Gao, Liang, Sun, Bingqing, Shao, Shi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Liao, Shihong
Liu, Yizhou
Zheng, Haonan
Li, Ming
Wang, Jie
Gao, Liang
Sun, Bingqing
Shao, Shi
author_facet Liao, Shihong
Liu, Yizhou
Zheng, Haonan
Li, Ming
Wang, Jie
Gao, Liang
Sun, Bingqing
Shao, Shi
contents Traditional cosmological hydrodynamical simulations usually assume equal-numbered but unequal-mass dark matter and baryonic particles, which can lead to spurious collisional heating due to energy equipartition. To avoid such a numerical heating effect, a simulation setup with equal-mass dark matter and baryonic particles, which corresponds to a particle number ratio of $N_{\rm DM}:N_{\rm gas} = Ω_{\rm cdm} / Ω_{\rm b}$, is preferred. However, previous studies have typically used grid-based particle loads to prepare such initial conditions, which can only reach specific values for $N_{\rm DM}:N_{\rm gas}$ due to symmetry requirements. In this study, we propose a method based on the glass approach that can generate two-component particle loads with more general $N_{\rm DM}:N_{\rm gas}$ ratios. The method simultaneously relaxes two Poisson particle distributions by introducing an additional repulsive force between particles of the same component. We show that the final particle load closely follows the expected minimal power spectrum, $P(k) \propto k^{4}$, exhibits good homogeneity and isotropy properties, and remains sufficiently stable under gravitational interactions. Both the dark matter and gas components individually also exhibit uniform and isotropic distributions. We apply our method to two-component cosmological simulations and demonstrate that an equal-mass particle setup effectively mitigates the spurious collisional heating that arises in unequal-mass simulations. Our method can be extended to generate multi-component uniform and isotropic distributions. Our code based on Gadget-2 is available at https://github.com/liaoshong/gadget-2glass .
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_06210
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Particle loads for cosmological simulations with equal-mass dark matter and baryonic particles
Liao, Shihong
Liu, Yizhou
Zheng, Haonan
Li, Ming
Wang, Jie
Gao, Liang
Sun, Bingqing
Shao, Shi
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Computational Physics
Traditional cosmological hydrodynamical simulations usually assume equal-numbered but unequal-mass dark matter and baryonic particles, which can lead to spurious collisional heating due to energy equipartition. To avoid such a numerical heating effect, a simulation setup with equal-mass dark matter and baryonic particles, which corresponds to a particle number ratio of $N_{\rm DM}:N_{\rm gas} = Ω_{\rm cdm} / Ω_{\rm b}$, is preferred. However, previous studies have typically used grid-based particle loads to prepare such initial conditions, which can only reach specific values for $N_{\rm DM}:N_{\rm gas}$ due to symmetry requirements. In this study, we propose a method based on the glass approach that can generate two-component particle loads with more general $N_{\rm DM}:N_{\rm gas}$ ratios. The method simultaneously relaxes two Poisson particle distributions by introducing an additional repulsive force between particles of the same component. We show that the final particle load closely follows the expected minimal power spectrum, $P(k) \propto k^{4}$, exhibits good homogeneity and isotropy properties, and remains sufficiently stable under gravitational interactions. Both the dark matter and gas components individually also exhibit uniform and isotropic distributions. We apply our method to two-component cosmological simulations and demonstrate that an equal-mass particle setup effectively mitigates the spurious collisional heating that arises in unequal-mass simulations. Our method can be extended to generate multi-component uniform and isotropic distributions. Our code based on Gadget-2 is available at https://github.com/liaoshong/gadget-2glass .
title Particle loads for cosmological simulations with equal-mass dark matter and baryonic particles
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06210