%0 Generic %1 bolton2016sherwood %A Bolton, James S. %A Puchwein, Ewald %A Sijacki, Debora %A Haehnelt, Martin G. %A Kim, Tae-Sun %A Meiksin, Avery %A Regan, John A. %A Viel, Matteo %D 2016 %K forest igm lya simulations %T The Sherwood simulation suite: overview and data comparisons with the Lyman-alpha forest at redshifts 2 < z < 5 %U http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.03462 %X We introduce a new set of large scale, high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of the intergalactic medium: the Sherwood simulation suite. These are performed in volumes 10^3-160^3 h^-3 comoving Mpc^3, span almost four orders of magnitude in mass resolution with up to 17.2 billion particles, and employ a variety of physics variations including warm dark matter and galactic outflows. We undertake a detailed comparison of the simulations to high resolution, high signal-to-noise observations of the Lyman-alpha forest over the redshift range 2 < z < 5. The simulations are in very good agreement with the observational data, lending further support to the paradigm that the Lyman-alpha forest is a natural consequence of the web-like distribution of matter arising in LCDM cosmological models. Only a small number of minor discrepancies remain with respect to the observational data. Saturated Lyman-alpha absorption lines with column densities N_HI > 10^14.5 cm^-2 at 2 < z < 2.5 are underpredicted in the models. An uncertain correction for continuum placement bias is required to match the distribution and power spectrum of the transmitted flux, particularly at z > 4. Finally, the temperature of intergalactic gas in the simulations may be slightly too low at z=2.7 and a flatter temperature-density relation is required at z=2.4, consistent with the expected effects of non-equilibrium ionisation during He-II reionisation.

@misc{bolton2016sherwood, abstract = {We introduce a new set of large scale, high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of the intergalactic medium: the Sherwood simulation suite. These are performed in volumes 10^3-160^3 h^-3 comoving Mpc^{3}, span almost four orders of magnitude in mass resolution with up to 17.2 billion particles, and employ a variety of physics variations including warm dark matter and galactic outflows. We undertake a detailed comparison of the simulations to high resolution, high signal-to-noise observations of the Lyman-alpha forest over the redshift range 2 < z < 5. The simulations are in very good agreement with the observational data, lending further support to the paradigm that the Lyman-alpha forest is a natural consequence of the web-like distribution of matter arising in LCDM cosmological models. Only a small number of minor discrepancies remain with respect to the observational data. Saturated Lyman-alpha absorption lines with column densities N_HI > 10^14.5 cm^-2 at 2 < z < 2.5 are underpredicted in the models. An uncertain correction for continuum placement bias is required to match the distribution and power spectrum of the transmitted flux, particularly at z > 4. Finally, the temperature of intergalactic gas in the simulations may be slightly too low at z=2.7 and a flatter temperature-density relation is required at z=2.4, consistent with the expected effects of non-equilibrium ionisation during He-II reionisation.}, added-at = {2016-05-12T10:26:24.000+0200}, author = {Bolton, James S. and Puchwein, Ewald and Sijacki, Debora and Haehnelt, Martin G. and Kim, Tae-Sun and Meiksin, Avery and Regan, John A. and Viel, Matteo}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/22d19859fc3c389bcbe1b7c53977f893c/miki}, description = {[1605.03462] The Sherwood simulation suite: overview and data comparisons with the Lyman-alpha forest at redshifts 2 &lt; z &lt; 5}, interhash = {cd9fa9ff14cad6e0188fb8945c190ade}, intrahash = {2d19859fc3c389bcbe1b7c53977f893c}, keywords = {forest igm lya simulations}, note = {cite arxiv:1605.03462Comment: 19 pages, 21 figures, submitted to MNRAS. Images and movies may be viewed at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/astronomy/sherwood/}, timestamp = {2016-05-12T10:26:24.000+0200}, title = {The Sherwood simulation suite: overview and data comparisons with the Lyman-alpha forest at redshifts 2 < z < 5}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1605.03462}, year = 2016 }