Complex Views and New Clues of the Universe

Our Cosmic Home, which is the local volume of the Universe centered around us, contains very prominently visible structures, extending over almost one billion light-years. Such structures, ranging from the Local Group over the Local Void and the most prominent galaxy clusters like Virgo, Perseus, Coma and many more, represent a formidable site where extremely detailed observations exist.

Therefore, cosmological simulations of the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters within the Local Universe, rather than any other, randomly selected part of the cosmic web, are perfect tools to test our formation and evolution theories of galaxies and galaxy clusters down to the details. However, at these detailed level, such simulations are facing various challenges, from the computational point as well as from the treatment of various physical processes needed in order to capture the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters properly.

Within this CAS Research Group, such simulations are refined, especially focusing on enabling simulations to trace processes that act on much smaller length scales – such as the physics of plasmas. This will allow us making the next important steps forward within our understanding of the formation of galaxies and the large-scale structure. It will also help us to answer questions on how special some of the most prominent structures of the local universe are and what they tell us about the formation history of the universe. Furthermore, it will give us unique insights into how the complex baryonic processes shape the formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters.