During the last two decades, scientists have built a successful “Standard Model” of Cosmology which describes our Universe and its path from a hot fireball in its earliest moments to the sea of galaxies that we observe today. At the same time, this model poses deep puzzles that demand to be solved: What is the nature of dark matter and what is the origin of dark energy? Together, they account for 95% of the matter-energy content in the Universe but neither are currently understood.

Cosmology has entered a very exciting era where new and up-coming observations unprecedented in size and detail may find answers to these these deep fundamental questions about the nature and make-up of our Universe. In addition, multi-wavelength observations of the large-scale Universe can probe the nature of the inflationary phase in the very early Universe as well as determine the sum of neutrino masses.

Multi-wavelength simulations play a crucial role in answering these questions and providing predictions for different cosmological models and scenarios at an exquisite level of detail. In this project, researchers will build upon some already available simulations and carry out new simulations, ranging from gravity-only to hydrodynamics, to build a suite of multi-wavelength, multi-cosmology synthetic sky maps. These simulations and resulting sky maps will be used to support the analysis of ongoing DOE-funded cosmological surveys, to prepare for upcoming data by creating data challenges, and to plan future observational surveys. This will advance efforts to understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy.