VIRGO: Cosmological N-Body Simulations

The VIRGO Consortium is an international grouping of scientists carrying out supercomputer simulations of the formation of galaxies, galaxy clusters, large-scale structure, and of the evolution of the intergalactic medium. Although most of the consortium members are British, there are important nodes in Canada and the United States as well as Germany at the MPA. The primary platforms used by the consortium are at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre and at the Computing Center of the Max Planck Society in Garching. Further information about VIRGO can be found at the main UK site in Durham.

Projects of VIRGO include:

The Millennium Simulation Project Detailed computer simulations are a powerful tool to study one of the biggest challenges for theoretical cosmology: How did the galaxies we see in the universe today form out of the small fluctuations in matter density that were present in the primordial universe? The Millennium Simulations is the largest high-resolution cosmological simulation ever carried out and allows new theoretical insights the into joint formation of galaxies and supermassive black holes. (Includes data download)

The Hubble Volume Project To study the formation of clusters of galaxies, filaments and void-structures, a significant fraction of the entire observable universe is modelled and simulated by employing one billion mass particles. This used to be the largest such computer simulation ever done at the time. (Includes data download)

Intermediate-Scale Simulations Four different cosmological models were simulated in large boxes. The simulations contained 256³ particles each and represent different cosmological models. (Includes data download)

Higher Resolution Simulations in smaller boxes These cosmological models have the same parameters as the intermediate scale Virgo simulations except that the box size is smaller. Thus these simulations have higher mass resolution. (Includes data download)

Very Large Simulations Two cosmological models were simulated here in larger boxes than those of the Virgo simulations, while keeping a high mass resolution. We find many clusters in the box which are still well resolved and thus suitable for re-simulation. (Includes data download)

Cluster Resimulation Project We pick up clusters of various mass from the large-volume high resolution simulations and resimulate them at a higher mass resolution.
Topology of the Universe We use two large CDM simulations to study the statistical properties of biased "galaxy" distribution and to estimate the sample variance due to the choice of the observer position, so-called cosmic variance.
Large Scale Motions of Superclusters and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect
Ray-tracing simulations of gravitational lensing Raytrix is FORTRAN code to trace light rays through the dark matter distribution generated by the Very Large Simulations performed by the Virgo Consortium.

Simulations including Gas This page include simulations of InterGalactic Medium, Hydrodynamic simulations with radiative cooling, and SPH/N-body Simulations of Clusters (formation of a cluster size dark halo by collisional and collisionless dark matter)

Comments to: Virgo Administrator virgo@mpa-garching.mpg.de