Chris Power, Aaron S. G. Robotham, Danail Obreschkow, Alexander Hobbs, Geraint F. Lewis

There is strong evidence that cosmological N-body simulations dominated by Warm Dark Matter (WDM) contain spurious or unphysical haloes, most readily apparent as regularly spaced low-mass haloes strung along filaments. We show that spurious haloes are a feature of traditional N-body simulations of cosmological structure formation models, including WDM and Cold Dark Matter (CDM) models, in which gravitational collapse proceeds in an initially anisotropic fashion, and arises naturally as a consequence of discreteness-driven relaxation. We demonstrate this using controlled N-body simulations of plane-symmetric collapse and show that spurious haloes are seeded at shell crossing by localised velocity perturbations induced by the discrete nature of the density field, and that their characteristic separation should be approximately the mean inter-particle separation of the N-body simulation, which is fixed by the mass resolution within the volume. Using cosmological N-body simulations in which particles are split into two collisionless components of fixed mass ratio, we find that the spatial distribution of the two components show signatures of discreteness-driven relaxation in their spatial distribution on both large and small scales. Adopting a spline kernel gravitational softening that is of order the comoving mean inter-particle separation helps to suppress the effect of discreteness-driven relaxation, but cannot eliminate it completely. These results provide further motivation for recent developments of new algorithms, which include, for example, revisions of the traditional N-body approach by means of spatially adaptive anistropric gravitational softenings or explicit solutions for the evolution of dark matter in phase space.

Garrett Goon, Kurt Hinterbichler, Austin Joyce, Mark Trodden

We discuss non-renormalization theorems applying to galileon field theories and their generalizations. Galileon theories are similar in many respects to other derivatively coupled effective field theories, including general relativity and $P(X)$ theories. In particular, these other theories also enjoy versions of non-renormalization theorems that protect certain operators against corrections from self-loops. However, we argue that the galileons are distinguished by the fact that they are not renormalized even by loops of other heavy fields whose couplings respect the galileon symmetry.

Kenneth K. H. Fung, Hamish A. Clark, Geraint F. Lewis, Xiaofeng Wu

Despite being a major component in the teaching of special relativity, the twin `paradox' is generally not examined in courses on general relativity. Due to the complexity of analytical solutions to the problem, the paradox is often neglected entirely, and students are left with an incomplete understanding of the relativistic behaviour of time. This article outlines a project, undertaken by undergraduate physics students at the University of Sydney, in which a novel computational method was derived in order to predict the time experienced by a twin following a number of paths between two given spacetime coordinates. By utilising this method, it is possible to make clear to students that following a geodesic in curved spacetime does not always result in the greatest experienced proper time.

A. N. Baushev, L. del Valle, L. E. Campusano, A. Escala, R. R. Muñoz, G. A. Palma

Galaxy observations and N-body cosmological simulations produce conflicting dark matter halo density profiles for galaxy central regions. While simulations suggest a cuspy and universal profile (UDP) of this region, the majority of observations favor variable profiles with a core in the center. In this paper, we investigate the convergency of standard N-body simulations, especially in the cusp region, following the approach proposed by (Baushev, 2015). We simulate the well known Hernquist model using the SPH code Gadget-3 and consider the full array of dynamical parameters of the particles. We find that, although the cuspy profile is stable, all integrals of motion characterizing individual particles suffer strong unphysical variations along the whole halo, revealing an effective interaction between the test bodies. This result casts doubts on the reliability of the velocity distribution function obtained in the simulations. Moreover, we find unphysical Fokker-Planck streams of particles in the cusp region. The same streams should appear in cosmological N-body simulations, being strong enough to change the shape of the cusp or even to create it. Our analysis, based on the Hernquist model and the standard SPH code, strongly suggests that the UDPs generally found by the cosmological N-body simulations may be a consequence of numerical effects. A much better understanding of the N-body simulation convergency is necessary before a 'core-cusp problem' can properly be used to question the validity of the CDM model.