THE NEW HORIZON RUN COSMOLOGICAL N-BODY SIMULATIONS

Abstract

We present two large cosmological N-body simulations, called Horizon Run 2 (HR2) and Horizon Run 3 (HR3), made using <TEX>$6000^3$</TEX> = 216 billions and <TEX>$7210^3$</TEX> = 374 billion particles, spanning a volume of <TEX>$(7.200\;h^{-1}Gpc)^3$</TEX> and <TEX>$(10.815\;h^{-1}Gpc)^3$</TEX>, respectively. These simulations improve on our previous Horizon Run 1 (HR1) up to a factor of 4.4 in volume, and range from 2600 to over 8800 times the volume of the Millennium Run. In addition, they achieve a considerably finer mass resolution, down to <TEX>$1.25{\times}10^{11}h^{-1}M_{\odot}$</TEX>, allowing to resolve galaxy-size halos with mean particle separations of <TEX>$1.2h^{-1}$</TEX>Mpc and <TEX>$1.5h^{-1}$</TEX>Mpc, respectively. We have measured the power spectrum, correlation function, mass function and basic halo properties with percent level accuracy, and verified that they correctly reproduce the CDM theoretical expectations, in excellent agreement with linear perturbation theory. Our unprecedentedly large-volume N-body simulations can be used for a variety of studies in cosmology and astrophysics, ranging from large-scale structure topology, baryon acoustic oscillations, dark energy and the characterization of the expansion history of the Universe, till galaxy formation science - in connection with the new SDSS-III. To this end, we made a total of 35 all-sky mock surveys along the past light cone out to z = 0.7 (8 from the HR2 and 27 from the HR3), to simulate the BOSS geometry. The simulations and mock surveys are already publicly available at http://astro.kias.re.kr/Horizon-Run23/.