Zoom-in Simulations

“Zoom-in” simulations are designed to study individual halos at high resolutions. To do this, researchers run a large but low-resolution simulation, identify an interesting halo, and rerun the simulation with additional resolution added to the region which will eventually become that halo.

This site currently hosts three sets of zoom-in simulations.

• The Symphony simulation suite is a collection of five different smaller zoom-in simulations suites which cover masses ranging from LMC-mass dawrf galaxies to very high mass galaxy clusters.

• The Milky Way-est suite is a set of Milky Way-mass dark matter halos which have been selected to match large mergers which were similar to those experienced by the actual Milky Way.

• The EDEN suite is a set of Milky Way-mass dark matter halos with embedded disk potentials, which leads to more realistic tidal fields and subhalo disruption at small radii.

Instructions for downloading data can be found at the Data Access Instructions page and a high level description of all the available datasets for each simulation can be found at the Data Specifications page.

Most of the available data must be read through the lightweight symlib library, which allows you to access our specialized, space-efficient files and also structures the data in a way which is easier to use than most traditional data formats, particularly when tracking the evolution of subhalos and particles over time. Tutorials and documentations can be found on the Symlib page.