The Via Lactea INCITE Simulation: Galactic Dark Matter Substructure at High Resolution

Understand

It is a clear unique prediction of the cold dark matter paradigm of cosmological structure formation that galaxies form hierarchically and are embedded in massive, extended dark halos teeming with self-bound substructure or "subhalos".

• The amount and spatial distribution of subhalos around their host provide unique information and clues on the galaxy assembly process and the nature of the dark matter.
• Here we present results from the Via Lactea INCITE simulation, a one billion particle, one million cpu-hour simulation of the formation and evolution of a Galactic dark matter halo and its substructure population.