In recent months, the project team completed the porting of the OpenGadget3 code on GPUs, ensuring its accurate execution for full-physics cosmological simulations.
The focus has been specifically on galaxy clusters within cosmological volumes.
The study's scientific research aims to address the differences between observed and simulated galaxies within cluster cores, as highlighted in studies by Meneghetti et al. (2020, 2021, 2023) and Ragagnin et al. (2022). These studies, based on strong lensing measurements, suggest that cluster galaxies simulated in the context of collisionless dark matter are less compact than their observed counterparts.
Systematic issues with simulations or incorrect assumptions about the properties of dark matter could explain these results. For example, recent investigations suggest assuming a collisional nature of dark matter may be a viable solution (Daneng & Yu, 2021).
The team is seeking access to EuroHPC GPU-based facilities to conduct a series of high-resolution simulations of galaxy clusters.
The primary objective is to evaluate the impact of self-interacting dark matter on alleviating discrepancies between simulation results and observations of galaxy-galaxy strong lensing in cluster environments.
Antonio Ragagnin, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica - Italy