Galaxy-Intergalactic Medium Interaction Calculation
| Project Acronym | GIMIC |
| Scientific Discipline | Astrophysics, Cosmology |
| Principal Investigator(s) | Prof. Dr. Simon White, Prof. Dr. Carlos Frenk |
| Leading Institution | VIRGO Consortium via Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany |
| Partner Institution(s) |
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| DEISA Home Site | EPCC, RZG |
Project summary
Virgo is an international consortium of cosmologists that performs large numerical simulations of the formation of galaxies. Its Millennium Simulation is the largest ever calculation to follow the formation of the dark haloes that seed galaxies (see the cover story in Nature, June 2 2005). To understand the properties of the galaxies themselves, it is necessary to simulate how gas cools and forms stars in such haloes. GIMIC simulates the formation of galaxies in several regions selected from the Millennium Simulation, but now including hydrodynamics. This allows Virgo members to obtain unprecedented insight into how galaxies form on truly cosmological scales.
Building in part on work as part of DEISA's JRA2, the project could make full use of DECI's common data repository and coordinated scheduling in a work farm approach to computation scheduling and post-processing, thereby facilitating joint international analysis. These simulations were performed within the DECI initiative of DEISA, and were run on HPCx with the assistance of EPCC.
