Synthetic universes: How simulations will help search for dark energy

The Dark Energy Survey is one of the most ambitious astrophysics experiments ever launched. For five years, a custom-designed camera mounted on a telescope in Chile will collect images of distant galaxies in the southern sky over an area of 5,000 square degrees, corresponding to roughly one-eighth of the visible universe. That project will generate petabytes (thousands of terabytes) of data that must be painstakingly analyzed by the collaboration of scientists from 27 institutions to find answers about the nature of dark energy, dark matter and the forces that shape the evolution of the universe. But the real data collected by that camera is only a fraction of the work in store for the Dark Energy Survey team. As part of the survey Simulation Working Group, Andrey Kravtsov and Matthew Becker of the University of Chicago (in collaboration with researchers at Stanford University and University of Michigan) are building and running complex computer simulations modeling the evolution of the matter distribution in the universe. By the end of the project, these simulations may increase the data analysis demands of the survey by as much as a hundredfold. Why is such a large investment of time and effort in simulations needed? Accuracy, Kravtsov said.