arXiv subjects

Øyvind Christiansen

Publications and source records attributed to Øyvind Christiansen.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

gevolution 2.0: GPU-accelerated relativistic N-body simulations for cosmology

High-performance computing is increasingly dominated by hardware acceleration using Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). To take advantage of this long-term trend, we implement a major overhaul of the parallelisation approach in the relativistic particle-mesh N-body code gevolution. The new version 2.0 of gevolution employs three layers of parallelisation: MPI for scalability on a distributed memory system, shared memory parallelisation on each MPI rank using OpenMP, and offloading all compute intensive tasks to GPUs using CUDA. The code also includes many new features that have been developed over the past years. We provide an overview of the code structure and show key performance benchmarks. The public release of gevolution 2.0 can be found at https://github.com/gevolution-code/gevolution-2.0. We also release a GPU-ready version of the LATfield2 library which provides the parallelisation backend, available at https://github.com/gevolution-code/LATfield2.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2026

Mass-Varying Neutrinos from an Inverse Symmetron

Neutrinos enter cosmology in different ways and are constrained by distinct observational probes across different epochs: as a relativistic species at high redshift, as a massive but clustering-suppressing component at low redshift, and as a particle physics observable in laboratory experiments. Low (verging on negative) bounds on neutrino mass from galaxy surveys motivate exploration of models where neutrinos may couple to dark energy, causing their mass to vary over cosmic evolution. If the coupling involves an inverse phase transition (symmetry broken, rather than restored, as neutrinos become nonrelativistic) this can tame instabilities in neutrino growth, appear as a lower neutrino mass in galaxy surveys, and add extra suppression to the matter power spectrum. We find that the late-time decoupling shuts down the fifth force and inhibits the excessive growth of neutrino perturbations, thereby eliminating linear-regime instabilities. The model may potentially address the Hubble tension via an early dark energy component localized around the time of recombination.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Cosmic strings, domain walls and environment-dependent clustering

Recent cosmological data favour phantom-crossing dark energy, motivating models with non-minimal couplings that induce a fifth force on structure formation. Reconciling these models with local tests often requires strong screening, leading to environment-dependent clustering. We investigate such effects via a late-time structure-induced phase transition driven by a non-minimally coupled scalar field. For this purpose, we introduce norns, a fully relativistic cosmological particle-mesh code that self-consistently evolves a complex scalar field - a generalisation of the symmetron producing global U(1) strings rather than domain walls. Using simulations, we compare string and wall-forming models, quantifying impacts on the matter power spectrum, halo mass function, and defect dynamics. Strong environment-dependent effects can generate significant departures from LCDM in underdense regions while keeping the overall power spectrum changes modest (~ 4-15% at k~0.3-0.5 h Mpc^-1, sub-percent for z > 0.2). We find that an attractive fifth force can locally suppress structure growth in voids while enhancing it in surrounding overdense regions by driving outflows from the voids. These effects leave distinctive signatures in the matter density probability density function and in marked halo power spectra, which are likely detectable in low-redshift data.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Gravitational waves from dark domain walls

For most of cosmic history, the evolution of our Universe has been governed by the physics of a 'dark sector', consisting of dark matter and dark energy, whose properties are only understood in a schematic way. The influence of these constituents is mediated exclusively by the force of gravity, meaning that insight into their nature must be gleaned from gravitational phenomena. The advent of gravitational-wave astronomy has revolutionised the field of black hole astrophysics, and opens a new window of discovery for cosmological sources. Relevant examples include topological defects, such as domain walls or cosmic strings, which are remnants of a phase transition. Here we present the first simulations of cosmic structure formation in which the dynamics of the dark sector introduces domain walls as a source of stochastic gravitational waves in the late Universe. We study in detail how the spectrum of gravitational waves is affected by the properties of the model, and extrapolate the results to scales relevant to the recent evidence for a stochastic gravitational wave background. Our relativistic implementation of the field dynamics paves the way for optimal use of the next generation of gravitational experiments to unravel the dark sector.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2025

Environmental cosmic acceleration from a phase transition in the dark sector

A new degravitation mechanism within the framework of scalar tensor gravity is postulated and included by prescription. The mechanism eliminates all constant contributions from the potential to the Friedmann equation, leaving only the kinematic and the dynamic terms of the potential to drive cosmic acceleration. We explore a scenario involving a density-triggered phase transition in the late-time universe, and argue that the resulting effective energy density and equation of state parameter can explain late-time cosmology when extrapolated to a region of the parameter space.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2024

asimulation: Domain formation and impact on observables in resolved cosmological simulations of the (a)symmetron

The symmetron is a dark energy and dark matter candidate that forms topological defects in the late-time universe and holds the promise of resolving some of the cosmological tensions. We performed high-resolution simulations of the dynamical and non-linear (a)symmetron using the recently developed relativistic N-body code asevolution. By extensively testing the temporal and spatial convergence of domain decompositioning and domain wall stability, we determined criteria and physical intuition for the convergence. We applied the resolution criteria to run five high-resolution simulations with 1280^3 grids and a box size of 500 Mpc/h of the (a)symmetron. We considered the behaviour of the scalar field and the domain walls in each scenario. We find the effect on the matter power spectra, the HMFs, and observables computed over the past light cone of an observer, such as the integrated Sachs-Wolfe and non-linear Rees-Sciama effect and the lensing, compared to LCDM. We show local oscillations of the fifth force strength and the formation of planar structures in the density field. The dynamics of the field was visualised in animations with high resolution in time. The simulation code is made publicly available.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2023

asevolution: a relativistic N-body implementation of the (a)symmetron

We present asevolution, a cosmological N-body code developed based on gevolution, which consistently solves for the (a)symmetron scalar field and metric potentials within the weak-field approximation. In asevolution, the scalar field is dynamic and can form non-linear structures. A cubic term is added in the symmetron potential to make the symmetry-broken vacuum expectation values different, which is motivated by observational tensions in the late-time universe. To study the effects of the scalar field dynamics, we also implement a constraint solver making use of the quasi-static approximation, and provide options for evaluating the background evolution, including using the full energy density averaged over the simulation box within the Friedmann equation. The asevolution code is validated by comparison with the Newtonian N-body code ISIS that makes use of the quasi-static approximation. There is found a very small effect of including relativistic and weak-field corrections in our small test simulations; it is seen that for small masses, the field is dynamic and can not be accurately solved for using the quasi-static approximation; and we observe the formation of unstable domain walls and demonstrate a useful way to identify them within the code. A first consideration indicates that the domain walls are more unstable in the asymmetron scenario.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2021

Gravitational and electromagnetic radiation from binary black holes with electric and magnetic charges: Elliptical orbits on a cone

Extending the electromagnetic and gravitational radiations from binary black holes with electric and magnetic charges in circular orbits in Phys. Rev. D {\bf 102}, 103520 (2020), we calculate the total emission rates of energy and angular momentum due to gravitational and electromagnetic radiations from dyonic binary black holes in precessing elliptical orbits. It is shown that the emission rates of energy and angular momentum due to gravitational and electromagnetic radiations have the same dependence on the conic angle for different orbits. Moreover, we obtain the evolutions of orbits and find that a circular orbit remains circular while an elliptic orbit becomes quasi-circular due to electromagnetic and gravitational radiations. Using the evolution of orbits, we derive the waveform models for dyonic binary black hole inspirals and show the amplitudes of the gravitational waves for dyonic binary black hole inspirals differ from those for Schwarzschild binary black hole inspirals, which can be used to test electric and magnetic charges of black holes.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Charged Black Hole Mergers: Orbit Circularisation and Chirp Mass Bias

We consider the inspiral of black holes carrying U(1) charge that is not electromagnetic, but corresponds to some dark sector. In the weak-field, low-velocity regime, the components follow Keplerian orbits. We investigate how the orbital parameters evolve for dipole-dominated emission and find that the orbit quickly circularises, though not as efficiently as for a gravitationally dominated emission. We then regard circular orbits, and look for modifications in the gravitational waveform from the components carrying small charges. Taking this into account we populate the waveform with simplified LIGO noise and put it through a matched filtering procedure where the template bank only consists of uncharged templates, focusing on the charges' effect on the chirp mass estimation. We find a consistent overestimation of the `generalised' chirp mass, and a possible over- and underestimation of the actual chirp mass. Finally, we briefly consider the effect of such charges on hyperbolic encounters, finding again a bias arising from interpreting the generalised chirp mass as the actual chirp mass.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Gravitational and electromagnetic radiation from binary black holes with electric and magnetic charges: Circular orbits on a cone

We derive the equations of motion of dyonic black hole binaries with electric and magnetic charges and explore features of static orbits. By using a Newtonian method with the inclusion of radiation reaction, we calculate the total emission rate of energy and angular momentum due to gravitational radiation and electromagnetic radiation for circular orbits. Moreover, we obtain the evolutions of orbits and calculate merger times of dyonic binaries. We show that electric and magnetic charges significantly suppress the merger times of dyonic binaries. Our results provide rich information about dyonic binaries and can be used to test black holes with magnetic charges.

gr-qc↗