Abstract
Neutrinos are very weakly interacting particles with a low mass. In fact, the mass of the neutrinos has not yet been determined by experiments or observations. Still, neutrinos are a good candidate for some of the dark matter in the universe.
In this thesis we will look at the effect of massive neutrinos on cosmological structure formation. We will use a model with cold dark matter (CDM) and a cosmological constant, and we will replace some of the CDM with neutrinos during the simulations. An N-body code is used to simulate the evolution of the model, and neutrinos are added to the code via two different methods. In the first method we use transfer functions from linear theory to generate a density field for the neutrinos. For the second method we will use a smoothing function that smooths out the perturbations to the CDM density field. This smoothed out field will approximate a neutrino density field, and will be added to the CDM field. The effect of neutrinos will be analysed using a matter power spectrum.
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Veileder: Professor Øystein Elgarøy, Institutt for teoretisk astrofysikk, UiO
Intern sensor: Professor Mats Carlsson, Institutt for teoretisk astrofysikk, UiO
Ekstern sensor: Postdoktor Sigurd Kirkevold Næss, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK