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Relativistic initial conditions for N-body simulations

2 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

2 Pith papers citing it
abstract

Initial conditions for (Newtonian) cosmological N-body simulations are usually set by re-scaling the present-day power spectrum obtained from linear (relativistic) Boltzmann codes to the desired initial redshift of the simulation. This back-scaling method can account for the effect of inhomogeneous residual thermal radiation at early times, which is absent in the Newtonian simulations. We analyse this procedure from a fully relativistic perspective, employing the recently-proposed Newtonian motion gauge framework. We find that N-body simulations for LambdaCDM cosmology starting from back-scaled initial conditions can be self-consistently embedded in a relativistic space-time with first-order metric potentials calculated using a linear Boltzmann code. This space-time coincides with a simple "N-body gauge" for z<50 for all observable modes. Care must be taken, however, when simulating non-standard cosmologies. As an example, we analyse the back-scaling method in a cosmology with decaying dark matter, and show that metric perturbations become large at early times in the back-scaling approach, indicating a breakdown of the perturbative description. We suggest a suitable "forwards approach" for such cases.

citation-role summary

background 1 method 1

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fields

astro-ph.CO 2

years

2026 1 2025 1

verdicts

UNVERDICTED 2

representative citing papers

Effective Field Theory of Large Scale Structure and Newtonian Motion Gauges

astro-ph.CO · 2026-05-06 · unverdicted · novelty 7.0 · 2 refs

A Newtonian Motion Gauge found via Einstein-Boltzmann solver maps linear dynamics with scale-dependent growth and GR corrections to Newtonian equations, enabling consistent nonlinear EFT calculations that are transformed back for accuracy in real and redshift space.

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Showing 2 of 2 citing papers.

  • Effective Field Theory of Large Scale Structure and Newtonian Motion Gauges astro-ph.CO · 2026-05-06 · unverdicted · none · ref 61 · 2 links · internal anchor

    A Newtonian Motion Gauge found via Einstein-Boltzmann solver maps linear dynamics with scale-dependent growth and GR corrections to Newtonian equations, enabling consistent nonlinear EFT calculations that are transformed back for accuracy in real and redshift space.

  • Modeling nonlinear scales for dynamical dark energy cosmologies with COLA astro-ph.CO · 2025-10-16 · unverdicted · none · ref 121 · internal anchor

    COLA-based hybrid emulator reproduces nonlinear power spectrum boosts in w0wa models to <2% error vs EuclidEmulator2 and produces <0.3σ shifts in LSST-like cosmic shear parameter constraints.