Adaptive Refinement Tree - a new high-resolution N-body code for cosmological simulations

Abstract

We present a new high-resolution N-body algorithm for cosmological simulations. The algorithm employs a traditional particle-mesh technique on a cubic grid and successive multilevel relaxations on the finer meshes, introduced recursively in a fully adaptive manner in the regions where the density exceeds a predefined threshold. The mesh is generated to effectively match an arbitrary geometry of the underlying density field -- a property particularly important for cosmological simulations. In a simulation the mesh structure is not created at every time step but is properly adjusted to the evolving particle distribution. The algorithm is fast and effectively parallel. We present a detailed description of the methodology, implementation, and tests of the code. We further use the code to study the structure of dark matter halos in high-resolution (2/h kpc) simulations of standard CDM (Omega=1, h=0.5, sigma_8=0.63) and LCDM (Omega_Lambda=1-Omega_0=0.7, h=0.7, sigma_8=1.0) models. We find that halo density profiles in both CDM and LCDM models are well fitted by the analytical model presented recently by Navarro et al., which predicts a singular [$ρ(r)\propto r^{-1}$] behavior of the halo density profiles at small radii. We therefore conclude that halos formed in the $Λ$CDM model have structure similar to CDM halos and thus cannot explain the dynamics of the central parts of dwarf spiral galaxies, as inferred from the galaxies' rotation curves.