The Virgo Consortium

The OWLS Project

Zoom into a halo

Zoom into a halo, from left to right, the images are 10, 1 and 0.1 Mpc/h on a side. The colour coding shows the projected gas density.

About

OWLS (OverWhelmingly Large Simulations) project consists of a large suite of cosmological, smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations with varying box sizes and resolutions. It was made possible by the temporary availability of the supercomputer that serves as the correlator for the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope, and aims to use the potential of simulations to gain insight into the physics that determines the formation of galaxies and the evolution of the intergalactic medium

The real power of the project stems, however, not from the size of the simulations, but from the fact that they are repeated many (more than 50) times, each time varying a subgrid prescription, most of which were newly developed
for this project.

Zoom into the tenth most massive halo

Zoom into the tenth most massive halo, from left to right, the images are 40, 4 and 0.4 Mpc/h on a side. The colour coding shows the projected gas density.

References

The initial paper for “The OWLS Project” has been published as Schaye et al. 2010. For more information please contact Joop Schaye.

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