Simulations of Large-Scale Structure in the New Millennium

Simulations of large-scale structure in the universe have played a vital role in observational cosmology since the 1980's in particular. Their important role will definitely continue to be true in the 21st century; indeed the requirements for simulations in the precision cosmology era will become more progressively demanding as they are supposed to fill the missing link in an accurate and reliable manner between the “initial” condition at z=1000 revealed by WMAP and the galaxy/quasar distribution at z=0 − 6 surveyed by 2dF and SDSS. In this review, I will summarize what we have learned so far from the previous cosmological simulations, and discuss several remaining problems for the new millennium.

Large Scale Structure Among z ∼ 2 Quasars as a Cosmological Standard Ruler

The peak in the power spectrum at ≈ 130h−1 Mpc at low redshifts provides a standard ruler in comoving space. This scale is shown to be present in the observed quasar distribution at z ∼ 2. This implies strong constraints on the density parameter, Ω0, and weaker constraints on the cosmological constant, λ0. Independently of λ0 (in the range λ0 ∊ [0, 1]), the constraint is 0.1 < Ω0 < 0.45 (68% confidence limit).Combination of the power spectrum peak method with very independent results from the supernovae Type Ia method yields Ω0 = (0.30 ± 0.11) + (0.57 ± 0.11)(λ0 −0.7), 0.55 < λ0 < 0.95, (68% confidence limits) without assuming Ω0 + λ0 = 1. This supports the almost flat, perturbed Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker model, independently of any cosmic microwave background observations.