Cylindrical cosmological simulations with StePS

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Hauptverfasser: Rácz, Gábor, Varga, Viola H., Pál, Balázs, Szapudi, István, Csabai, István, Sawala, Till
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Rácz, Gábor
Varga, Viola H.
Pál, Balázs
Szapudi, István
Csabai, István
Sawala, Till
author_facet Rácz, Gábor
Varga, Viola H.
Pál, Balázs
Szapudi, István
Csabai, István
Sawala, Till
contents The global topology of the Universe can affect long-range gravitational forces via boundary conditions. Detailed studies of non-trivial topologies require simulations that natively adopt such geometries. Cosmological $N$-body simulations typically evolve matter in a periodic cubic box. While numerically convenient, this imposes a non-trivial three-torus topology that affects long-range gravitational forces, potentially biasing large-scale statistics. We introduce a compactified simulation framework that is only periodic along a single axis, characterised by an infinite topology with isotropic boundary conditions towards the perpendicular directions, namely, a $\mathrm{S}^1\times\mathbb{R}^2$ (slab) topology. This new simulation geometry is ideal for simulating systems with cylindrical symmetries such as filaments or certain anisotropic cosmological models. We compactified the comoving space via an inverse stereographic projection along the radial direction of a periodic cylinder. Then, we evolved the particles based on Newtonian dynamics. A smoothly varying spatial and mass resolution with radius suppresses edge artefacts at the free outer boundary. Our implementation in the StePS (STEreographically Projected cosmological Simulations) framework uses a direct force calculation that maps efficiently to GPUs, as well as an Octree force calculation for use on large CPU clusters. The cylindrical domain's topology enables fully self-consistent simulations to be run in the $\mathrm{S}^1\times\mathbb{R}^2$ manifold, while mitigating any periodic-image artefacts with respect to targets whose symmetries are mismatched to a cubic box. The main trade-off is a radially varying resolution with distinct systematics and analysis requirements. Finally, we demonstrate the accuracy of the new simulation method via a standard lambda cold dark matter cosmological simulation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_20787
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Cylindrical cosmological simulations with StePS
Rácz, Gábor
Varga, Viola H.
Pál, Balázs
Szapudi, István
Csabai, István
Sawala, Till
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
The global topology of the Universe can affect long-range gravitational forces via boundary conditions. Detailed studies of non-trivial topologies require simulations that natively adopt such geometries. Cosmological $N$-body simulations typically evolve matter in a periodic cubic box. While numerically convenient, this imposes a non-trivial three-torus topology that affects long-range gravitational forces, potentially biasing large-scale statistics. We introduce a compactified simulation framework that is only periodic along a single axis, characterised by an infinite topology with isotropic boundary conditions towards the perpendicular directions, namely, a $\mathrm{S}^1\times\mathbb{R}^2$ (slab) topology. This new simulation geometry is ideal for simulating systems with cylindrical symmetries such as filaments or certain anisotropic cosmological models. We compactified the comoving space via an inverse stereographic projection along the radial direction of a periodic cylinder. Then, we evolved the particles based on Newtonian dynamics. A smoothly varying spatial and mass resolution with radius suppresses edge artefacts at the free outer boundary. Our implementation in the StePS (STEreographically Projected cosmological Simulations) framework uses a direct force calculation that maps efficiently to GPUs, as well as an Octree force calculation for use on large CPU clusters. The cylindrical domain's topology enables fully self-consistent simulations to be run in the $\mathrm{S}^1\times\mathbb{R}^2$ manifold, while mitigating any periodic-image artefacts with respect to targets whose symmetries are mismatched to a cubic box. The main trade-off is a radially varying resolution with distinct systematics and analysis requirements. Finally, we demonstrate the accuracy of the new simulation method via a standard lambda cold dark matter cosmological simulation.
title Cylindrical cosmological simulations with StePS
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20787