Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter Computational

Friday, 13 September 2024, 14:00   (S26)

Next generation galaxy formation simulations: challenges and opportunities

Volker Springel
Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

Numerical simulations of cosmic structure formation have become a uniquely powerful tool for studying galaxy formation. Starting right after the Big Bang, they predict the dark matter backbone of the cosmic web far into the non-linear regime and follow complex galaxy formation physics with rapidly improving fidelity. However, much of the relevant physics is still represented in a highly approximate fashion if not missing entirely. I will critically discuss current methodologies and highlight the challenges involved in obtaining future multi-physics, multi-scale simulations that aim for more reliable and predictive simulations. The landscape of this work is also profoundly affected by current technological trends, ranging from GPU- and exascale computing to applications of machine learning.