CLEF-SSH public page
Over the past decades, numerical N-body simulation methods have
become a most powerful tool to investigate the formation and evolution
of cosmological structure. Complex non-linear physics, acting over a
wide range of physical scales and time, makes the structure formation
process hard or impossible to describe without the use of numerical
methods. These methods generaly track the growth of structure by
integrating the equations of motion of individual particles. Besides
gravity and pressure gradients there are several other physical
processes relevant for the evolution of the baryonic component (common
matter) of the universe. For example, radiative cooling and
non-gravitational heating are of key importance to understand the
present-day, high-quality, observations of galaxy clusters and to sutdy
their evolution.
The CLEF-SSH collaboration aims at investigating the formation and
evolution of the Universe's large scale structure, and in particular
that of galaxy clusters, throught the use of state-of-the-art numerical
simulation methods with hydodynamics, that include realistic models of
non-gravitational heating and radiative cooling of the baryonic (gas)
component.