The Aquarius Project

The Aquarius Project is a large-scale collaborative programme of the Virgo Consortium, similar in scope and scale to the Millennium Simulation project. At present, the principal set of Aquarius simulations contains six examples of an isolated halo similar in mass to that of the Milky Way. These are simulated in their full cosmological context (assuming the concordance LCDM cosmology) and at various resolutions up to about 200 million particles (counted within the radius where the enclosed density is 200 times the cosmic mean). One halo is also simulated at even higher resolution, resulting in almost 1.5 billion particles within this radius. These simulations are being used to understand the fine-scale structure predicted around the Milky Way by the standard structure formation model, and as the basis for simulation by various techniques of the growth of the stellar components of our Galaxy.

Publications

1. arxiv:0809.0894: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: A blueprint for detecting supersymmetric dark matter in the Galactic halo
Authors: Volker Springel (1), Simon D. M. White (1), Carlos S. Frenk (2), Julio F. Navarro (3,4), Adrian Jenkins (2), Mark Vogelsberger (1), Jie Wang (1), Aaron Ludlow (3), Amina Helmi (5) ((1) MPA, (2) Durham, (3) UVic, (4) UMass, (5) Groningen)
Comments: to appear in Nature, 23 pages, 8 figures, includes Supplementary Information

2. arxiv:0809.0898: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Aquarius Project: the subhalos of galactic halos
Authors: Volker Springel (1), Jie Wang (1), Mark Vogelsberger (1), Aaron Ludlow (2), Adrian Jenkins (3), Amina Helmi (4), Julio F. Navarro (2,5), Carlos S. Frenk (3), Simon D. M. White (1), ((1) MPA, (2) UVic, (3) Durham, (4) Groningen, (5) UMass)
Comments: submitted to MNRAS on 08/08/2008, 30 pages, 29 figures.
Full text with high-res figures: PDF (4 MB)

3. arxiv:0810.1522: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Diversity and Similarity of Cold Dark Matter Halos
Authors: Julio F. Navarro, Aaron Ludlow, Volker Springel, Jie Wang, Mark VogelsbergerSimon D. M. White, Adrian Jenkins, Carlos S. Frenk, Amina Helmi
Comments: submitted to MNRAS

4. arxiv:0812.0362: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Phase-space structure in the local dark matter distribution and its signature in direct detection experiments
Authors: Mark Vogelsberger, Amina Helmi, Volker Springel, Simon D. M. White, Jie Wang, Carlos S. Frenk, Adrian Jenkins, Aaron Ludlow, Julio F. Navarro
Comments: 15 pages, 15 figures, submitted to MNRAS

5. arxiv:0812.0976: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Formation and Survival of Discs in a Lambda-CDM Universe
Authors: Cecilia Scannapieco (1), Simon D. M. White (1), Volker Springel (1), Patricia B. Tissera (2) ((1) Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics - Garching; (2) Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics - Buenos Aires)
Comments: 14 pages, 10 figures, mn2e.cls. Submitted to MNRAS

6. arxiv:0903.3041: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Resolving Cosmic Structure Formation with the Millennium-II Simulation
Authors: Michael Boylan-Kolchin (1), Volker Springel (1), Simon D. M. White (1), Adrian Jenkins (2), Gerard Lemson (3, 4) ((1) MPA, (2) Durham, (3) ARI-ZAH, (4) MPE)
Comments: 16 pages, 13 figures; submitted to MNRAS (14 March 2009). Halo catalogs and merger trees will be available at this http URL following a database hardware upgrade. Images and additional information are available at the same website

7. arxiv:0903.4559: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Effects of Dark Matter Substructures on Gravitational Lensing: Results from the Aquarius Simulations
Authors: D. D. Xu (1), S. Mao (1), J. Wang (2,3), V. Springel (2), L. Gao (3), S. D. M. White (2), C. S. Frenk (3), A. Jenkins (3), G. Li (4), J. F. Navarro (5) ((1) Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, (2) Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics, (3) University of Durham, (4) University of Bonn, (5) University of Victoria)
Comments: 23 pages, 15 figures, 3 tables, submitted to MNRAS. High resolution version of the paper available at this http URL

8. arxiv:0907.3482: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Substructure depletion in the Milky Way halo by the disk
Authors: Elena D'Onghia (1), Volker Springel (2), Lars Hernquist (1), Dusan Keres (1) ((1) Harvard/CfA, (2) MPA, Garching)
Comments: 9 pages, 9 figures, submitted to ApJ

9. arxiv:0909.0262: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The origin of failed subhaloes and the common mass scale of the Milky Way satellite galaxies
Authors: Takashi Okamoto (1 and 2), Carlos S. Frenk (2) ((1) Tsukuba, (2) Durham)
Comments: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters

10. arxiv:0909.0265: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The properties of satellite galaxies in simulations of galaxy formation
Authors: Takashi Okamoto (1 and 2), Carlos S. Frenk (2), Adrian Jenkins (2), Tom Theuns (2 and 3) ((1) Tsukuba, (2) Durham, (3) Antwerp)
Comments: 14 pages, 11 figures, submitted to MNRAS

11. arxiv:0909.1593: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The earliest stars and their relics in the Milky Way
Authors: L. Gao, Tom Theuns, C. S. Frenk, A. Jenkins, J. Navarro, V. Springel, S. D. M. White
Comments: 15 pages, 13 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

12. arxiv:0910.0310: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Globular Cluster Formation Within The Aquarius Simulation
Authors: B. F. Griffen, M. J. Drinkwater, P. A. Thomas, J. C. Helly, K. A. Pimbblet
Comments: 13 pages, 10 figures

13. arxiv:0910.3211: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Galactic stellar haloes in the CDM model
Authors: A. P. Cooper, S. Cole, C. S. Frenk, S. D. M. White, J. Helly, A. J. Benson, G. De Lucia, A. Helmi, A. Jenkins, J.F. Navarro, V. Springel, J. Wang
Comments: 26 pages, 20 figures; version with high resolution halo images at this http URL

14. arxiv:0911.2316: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Dark matter response to galaxy formation
Authors: Patricia B. Tissera (1,2), Simon D. M. White (3), Susana Pedrosa (1,2), Cecilia Scannapieco (4) ((1) Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas, CONICET, Argentina (2) Instituto de Astronomia y Fisica del Espacio, Argentina (3) Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany (4) Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam, Germany)
Comments: 14 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to MNRAS

15. arxiv:0911.4484: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: There's no place like home? Statistics of Milky Way-mass dark matter halos
Authors: Michael Boylan-Kolchin, Volker Springel, Simon D. M. White, Adrian Jenkins
Comments: 18 pages, 15 figures; submitted to MNRAS

16. arxiv:1001.2310: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Secondary Infall and the Pseudo-Phase-Space Density Profiles of Cold Dark Matter Halos
Authors: Aaron D. Ludlow (1,2), Julio F. Navarro (2), Volker Springel (3), Mark Vogelsberger (3,5), Jie Wang (3,4), Simon D. M. White (3), Adrian Jenkins (4), Carlos S. Frenk (4) ((1) AIFA Bonn, (2) UVic, (3) MPA, (4) Durham, (5) Harvard/CfA)
Comments: 18 pages, 15 figures; submitted to MNRAS

17. arxiv:1001.4890: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: An observer's view of simulated galaxies: disc-to-total ratios, bars, and (pseudo-)bulges
Authors: Cecilia Scannapieco (1,2), Dimitri A. Gadotti (2,3), Patrik Jonsson (4), Simon D.M. White (2) ((1) AIP, (2) MPA, (3) ESO, (4) UCSC)
Comments: submitted to MNRAS Letters

18. arxiv:1002.3162: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Streams and caustics: the fine-grained structure of LCDM haloes
Authors: Mark Vogelsberger (1,2), Simon D. M. White (1) ((1) MPA, (2) Harvard/CfA)
Comments: 17 pages, 16 figures, submitted to MNRAS

19. arxiv:1003.4268: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Kinematics of Milky Way Satellites in a Lambda Cold Dark Matter Universe
Authors: Louis E. Strigari, Carlos S. Frenk, Simon D. M. White
Comments: 9 pages, 5 figures

20. arxiv:1004.3094: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Substructure Lensing: Effects of Galaxies, Globular Clusters & Satellite Streams
Authors: Dandan Xu, Shude Mao, Andrew Cooper, Jie Wang, Liang Gao, Carlos Frenk, Volker Springel
Comments: 9 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, submitted to MNRAS

21. arxiv:1004.3217: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Satellite galaxies in hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way sized galaxies
Authors: M. Wadepuhl, V. Springel
Comments: 20 pages, 17 figures

22. arxiv:1006.2882: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The statistics of the subhalo abundance of dark matter haloes
Authors: L. Gao, C. S. Frenk, M. Boylan-Kolchin, A. Jenkins, V. Springel, S. D. M. White
Comments: 7 pages. Submitted to MNRAS. Minor changes to the text

23. arxiv:1008.0484: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Link between Galactic Satellite Orbits and Subhalo Accretion
Authors: Mark Lovell, Vincent Eke, Carlos Frenk, Adrian Jenkins
Comments: 10 pages, 8 figures, higher quality versions of some figures available at this http URL

24. arxiv:1008.5114: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Assembly History and Structure of Galactic Cold Dark Matter Halos
Authors: Jie Wang, J. F. Navarro, C. S. Frenk, S. D. M. White, V. Springel, A. Jenkins, A. Helmi, A. Ludlow, M. Vogelsberger
Comments: 11 pages, 10 figs, submitted to MNRAS

25. arxiv:1010.2491: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Bound and unbound substructures in Galaxy-scale Dark Matter haloes
Authors: Maciejewski, Michal; Vogelsberger, Mark; White, Simon D. M.; Springel, Volker
Comments: Submitted to MNRAS on 12/10/2010, 11 pages, 10 figures

26. arxiv:1010.6197: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Self-Consistent Field Method Applied to Simulated Dark Matter Haloes
Authors: Ben Lowing, Adrian Jenkins, Vincent Eke, Carlos Frenk
Comments: Submitted to MNRAS. 16 pages, 13 figures

27. arxiv:1011.1926: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: A Two-Point Correlation Function For Galactic Halo Stars
Authors: A.P. Cooper, S. Cole, C.S. Frenk, A. Helmi
Comments: 0 pages, 6 figures, accepted by MNRAS; bug in correlation function code fixed. Key figures updated, analysis of distance dependence included. Conclusions unchanged. For a related article by another group see arXiv:1011.1925

28. arxiv:1101.2544: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Sagittarius and its siblings in the Aquarius simulations
Authors: Amina Helmi, A.P. Cooper, S.D.M. White, S. Cole, C.S. Frenk, J.F. Navarro
Comments: 5 pages, 5 color figures, submitted to ApJ Letters. High-resolution version of the paper may be found at: this http URL

29. arxiv:1103.0007: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Too big to fail? The puzzling darkness of massive Milky Way subhaloes
Authors: Michael Boylan-Kolchin, James S. Bullock, Manoj Kaplinghat
Comments: 6 pages, 5 figures; matches version accepted by MNRAS Letters

30. arxiv:1103.0024: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The population of Milky Way satellites in the LambdaCDM cosmology
Authors: Andreea S. Font, Andrew J. Benson, Richard G. Bower, Carlos F. Frenk, Andrew P. Cooper, Gabriella De Lucia, John C. Helly, Amina Helmi, Yang-Shyang Li, Ian G. McCarthy, Julio F. Navarro, Volker Springel, Else Starkenburg, Jie Wang
Comments: The paper contains 23 pages, 13 figures. Accepted to MNRAS (2011, June 28)

31. arxiv:1104.1566: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Shape of Dark Matter Haloes in the Aquarius Simulations: Evolution and Memory
Authors: Carlos A. Vera-Ciro, Laura V. Sales, Amina Helmi, Carlos S. Frenk, Julio F. Navarro, Volker Springel, Mark Vogelsberger, Simon D.M. White
Comments: 16 pages, 14 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. Minor changes to match published version

32. arxiv:1104.2929: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Haloes of Bright Satellite Galaxies in a Warm Dark Matter Universe
Authors: Mark Lovell, Vincent Eke, Carlos Frenk, Liang Gao, Adrian Jenkins, Tom Theuns, Jie Wang, Alexey Boyarsky, Oleg Ruchayskiy
Comments: 6 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS, contact: m.r.lovell@durham.ac.uk

33. arxiv:1105.0680: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Haloes of Bright Satellite Galaxies in a Warm Dark Matter Universe
Authors: Cecilia Scannapieco (1), Simon D.M White (2), Volker Springel (3), Patricia B. Tissera (4) ((1) Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), (2) Max-Planck Institute for Astrophysics, (3) Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, (4) Institute for Astronomy and Space Physics)
Comments: Submitted to MNRAS. 20 pages, 18 figures

34. arxiv:1105.2293: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Effects of Patchy Reionization on Satellite Galaxies of the Milky Way
Authors: Ragnhild Lunnan (1), Mark Vogelsberger (1), Anna Frebel (1), Lars Hernquist (1), Adam Lidz (2), Michael Boylan-Kolchin (3) ((1) Harvard/CfA, (2) UPenn, (3) UC Irvine)
Comments: 11 pages, 9 figures, submitted to ApJ

35. arxiv:1105.3474: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Baryons in the Milky Way Satellites
Authors: Owen H. Parry, Vincent R. Eke, Carlos S. Frenk, Takashi Okamoto
Comments: 16 pages, 11 figures, submitted to MNRAS. Correction to calculation of central satellite masses (projected values were used for simulated satellites in original version)

36. arxiv:1107.1378: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Estimate of halo ellipticity as a function of radius with flexions
Authors: Xinzhong Er, Shude Mao, Dandan Xu, Yixian Cao
Comments: 9 pages,9 figures, MNRAS accepted

37. arxiv:1107.1916: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Where will supersymmetric dark matter first be seen?
Authors: L. Gao, C. S. Frenk, A. Jenkins, V. Springel, S. D. M. White
Comments: 6 pages, 3 figure. MNRAS in press. Minor changes to match the accepted version

38. arxiv:1111.2048: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Milky Way's bright satellites as an apparent failure of LCDM
Authors: Michael Boylan-Kolchin, James S. Bullock, Manoj Kaplinghat
Comments: 17 pages, 10 figures; submitted to MNRAS

39. arxiv:1111.2864: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The formation of shell galaxies similar to NGC 7600 in the cold dark matter cosmogony
Authors: Andrew P. Cooper, David Martinez-Delgado, John Helly, Carlos Frenk, Shaun Cole, Ken Crawford, Stefano Zibetti, Julio A. Carballo-Bello, R. Jay Gabany
Comments: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. 6 pages, 3 figures. For the movies discussed in the paper, high resolution figures and more, see this http URL

40. arxiv:1202.6061: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: Not too big, not too small: the dark halos of the dwarf spheroidals in the Milky Way
Authors: Carlos A. Vera-Ciro, Amina Helmi, Else Starkenburg, Maarten A. Breddels
Comments: 8 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS

41. arxiv:1203.3695: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: SubHaloes going Notts: The SubHalo-Finder Comparison Project
Authors: Julian Onions, Alexander Knebe, Frazer R. Pearce, Stuart I. Muldrew, Hanni Lux, Steffen R. Knollmann, Yago Ascasibar, Peter Behroozi, Pascal Elahi, Jiaxin Han, Michal Maciejewski, Manuel E. Merchan, Mark Neyrinck, Andres N. Ruiz, Mario A. Sgro, Volker Springel, Dylan Tweed
Comments: 16 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, Accepted for MNRAS

42. arxiv:1203.4097: [abs, ps, pdf, other]
Title: The Missing Massive Satellites of the Milky Way
Authors: Jie Wang (ICC, Durham), Carlos S. Frenk (ICC, Durham), Julio F. Navarro (Victoria), Liang Gao (NAOC)
Comments: 7 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS

Visualizations

This movie shows the formation of one of the Aquarius halos we simulated, over nearly the full age of the Universe from redshift z~50 to z=0. The camera position moves slowly around the forming galactic halo, pointing towards its centre at all times. The movie is based on our Aq-A-2 simulation.



Available Formats:

Aq-A-2-evolv.avi [high quality, divx5, 285 MB, 1024x768]
Aq-A-2-evolv.mp4 [high quality, MPEG4, 285 MB, 1024x768]
Aq-A-2-evolv.mpg [medium quality, MPEG2, DVD/PAL, 120 MB, 720x576]
Aq-A-2-evolv-lowres.mp4 [low resolution, MPEG4, 28 MB, 512x384]
Aq-A-2-evolv-HD.mp4 [ultra-high quality, MPEG4-HD, 838 MB, 1920x1080]

The video data is compressed using divx5 or h.264 (MPEG4) and has fairly high resolution, such that a fast PC and a good graphics card are required to play the videos properly. You also need the right software.You can use the 'mplayer' program under Linux. On a Mac, 'quicktime' should work natively for .mp4, and once the divx-codec is installed (available free of charge here) also for divx. Likewise for `windows mediaplayer'.




These images show the six Milky-Way sized halos we simulated, at z=0. The resolution corresponds to our resolution level 2, which has between 160 and 224 million particles in the final halo.

Click to enlarge the images.






These images compare our Aq-A halo at different numerical resolutions, ranging from just 800000 particles in Aq-A-5 to nearly 1.5 billion particles in Aq-A-1. The first image in the upper left shows the parent simulation, centred on the halo that was selected for further study in the zoom simulations.

Click to enlarge the images.








This image shows the Aq-A-1 simulation, and is available in very high resolution with up to 6144x4608 pixels (see links below).


[1536x1152] [6144x4608]



This all-sky map shows the surface brightness from dark matter annihilation at the position of the Sun, calculated directly from the Aq-A-1 simulation. (Note that no correction for the finite numerical resolution of the simulation has been included in this map.)
Click to enlarge the image.



[2434x1368]



These all-sky map shows different emission components of the dark matter annihilation signal, fully corrected for resolution limitations. The top left panel gives the main halo’s diffuse emission, while the top right panel shows the emission from all resolved subhalos. The bottom left panel gives the expected surface brightness from all unresolved subhalos down to the free streaming limit of the dark matter, assuming a spherically symmetric halo. This is a very smooth component over the sky that dominates the total flux. Finally, the bottom right panel shows the total surface brightness from all components together. 
Click to enlarge the images.






These images are composites of the individual images above, and correspond to Figures 2&3 in paper (2), respectively.

Click to enlarge the images, or use the link below to download a high resolution version.

[2060x3096]

[3096x2060]



Last modified: Sep 5, 2008  volker@mpa-garching.mpg.de