Here are realistic, full-sky, half-arcminute resolution simulations of the microwave sky matched to many recent astrophysical observations. The maps utilize the easily accessible HEALPix format to make these simulations applicable to many current and near future microwave background experiments.
Some of thenovel features of these simulations are that the radio and infrared galaxy populations are correlated with the galaxy cluster and grouppopulations, the primordial microwave background is lensed by the dark matter structure in the simulation via a ray-tracing code, thecontribution to the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signals from galaxy clusters, groups, and the intergalactic medium hasbeen included, and the gas prescription to model the SZ signals has been refined to match the most recent X-ray observations.
The cosmology adopted in these simulations is also consistent with the WMAP 5-year parameter measurements. These simulations should serve as a useful tool for microwave surveys to cross-check SZ cluster detection, power spectrum, and cross-correlation analyses.
Update May 2021: The MillimeterDL (mmDL) Simulations are an extended set of simulations based on the Sehgal et al. (2010) simulations below. The mmDL simulation set includes 500 high-resolution (0.5 arcmin), full-sky millimeter-wave simulations that have been generated with Deep Learning (DL) techniques and match the statistics, flux cut, and scalings of the 2019 updated version of the Sehgal et al. (2010) simulations. 500 mmDL realizations in HEALPix format and 30 realizations in CAR format are public on NERSC at this location: /global/cfs/cdirs/cmb/data/generic/mmDL. Instructions to gain access to this location are located at this link. The mmDL sims are also available via a web interface at: https://portal.nersc.gov/project/cmb/data/generic/mmDL/. Details regarding the mmDL simulations can be found in Han et al. 2021.
Here is an update of the Sehgal et al. (2010) simulations below. The changes are that 1.) the extragalactic CIB and thermal SZ component have been scaled down to better match some current observations, 2.) a flux cut of 7 mJy at 150 GHz has been applied to all radio source maps, 3.) low-frequency Galactic foregrounds (Synchrotron, Free-Free, AME) have been added based on the Planck Commander analysis, but at lower resolution than the other components (~0.5 deg), 4.) the maps now span 13 frequencies between 27 and 353 GHz, 5.) the maps are at a resolution of Nside=4096 (1 arcminute), and 6.) are in units of uK, unless otherwise specified in the README file. These updates/revisions were made by J. Colin Hill. Any questions may be sent to jcolin.hill@gmail.com and Neelima Sehgal at neelima.sehgal@stonybrook.edu. These simulations were used in the Simons Observatory Science Goals and Forecast paper, where additional details can be found (https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.07445).
Please note that these links point directly at binary files; you should right click on the links and select the "Save link as" option. Each green dot represents a single map for the corresponding data type/frequency pair; each map is 3GB in size. The blue squares point to compressed tarballs containing all the maps in the corresponding column or row. More information...CMB and SZ Maps, Simons Observatory Forecasts (2019) | |
Maps | Description |
Lensed CMB | This is the lensed CMB temperature map, in units of uK (this map is frequency-independent in the thermodynamic CMB temperature units used here). More information... |
CMB Lensing Convergence | This is the CMB lensing convergence (kappa) map, with which the CMB temperature field is lensed. It is computed via the Born approximation, i.e., no ray-tracing is performed. More information... |
Kinematic SZ | This is the kSZ map, in units of uK (although the filename has '148', this map is frequency-independent in the thermodynamic CMB temperature units used here). More information... |
Thermal SZ | This is the tSZ map, in units of Compton-y (dimensionless), with the rescaling factor applied to bring the amplitude of the power spectrum into reasonable agreement with the Planck 2013 y-map tSZ power spectrum. Note that the user must rescale this map to each frequency by multiplying by the tSZ spectral function and T_CMB=2.726e6 uK. More information... |
CMB and SZ power spectra, Simons Observatory Forecasts (2019) | |
Power Spectra | Description |
CMB_PS_healpix_Nside4096_DeltaT_uK_SimLensCMB.txt | This is the power spectrum of the lensed CMB temperature map, in units of uK^2 (with no factors of ell, 2pi, etc.). More information... |
kSZ_PS_Sehgal_healpix_Nside4096_DeltaT_uK.txt | This is the power spectrum of the kSZ map, in units of uK^2 (with no factors of ell, 2pi, etc.). More information... |
Sehgal_sim_tSZPS_unbinned_8192_y_rescale0p75.txt | This is the power spectrum of the tSZ map, in units of Compton-y (dimensionless) (with no factors of ell, 2pi, etc.), with the rescaling factor applied to bring the amplitude into reasonable agreement with the Planck 2013 y-map tSZ power spectrum. More information... |
The halo and galaxy catalogs provided here are unchanged from the original versions. Note that to match the rescaling of the CIB and thermal SZ components in the updated maps the thermal SZ signals in the halo files and fluxes in the IR galaxy files should be rescaled (multiplied) by a factor of 0.75. See Section 2.4.1 of https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.07445 for more details.
Catalogs, Sehgal et al. (2010) | |
Catalog | Description |
Low-Mass Halo (ascii) | Basic halo properties of halos with Mfof > 6.82 x 1012 Msun/h and with Mfof < 2 x 1013 Msun/h. More information... |
Low-Mass Halo | Same as above in binary. More information... |
N-Body Halo (ascii) | Basic halo properties of halos with Mfof > 2 x 1013 Msun/h. More information... |
N-Body Halo | Same as above in binary. More information... |
SZ Halo (ascii) | Halo properties, including SZ characteristics, for all the halos with Mfof > 2 x 1013 Msun/h. More information... |
SZ Halo | Same as above in binary. More information... |
IR Galaxies | Catalog of the basic population of infrared galaxies. More information... |
High-Flux IR Galaxies | Catalog of the very high flux infrared galaxies. More information... |
Radio Galaxies | Catalog of the radio galaxies. More information... |
The maps below are from the original simulations described by Sehgal et al. (2010).
Please note that these links point directly at binary files; you should right click on the links and select the "Save link as" option. Each green dot represents a single map for the corresponding data type/frequency pair; each map is 3GB in size. The blue squares point to compressed tarballs containing all the maps in the corresponding column or row; the blue dot in the lower right corner points to a tarball containing all the maps. More information...