Precision constrained simulation of the local Universe

We use the formalism of constrained Gaussian random fields to compute a precise large-scale simulation of the 60 h−1 Mpc volume of our local Universe. We derive the constraints from the reconstructed peculiar velocities of the 2MASS (Two Micron All-Sky Survey) Redshift Survey (2MRS). We obtain a correlation of 0.97 between the log density field of the dark matter distribution of the simulation and the log density of observed galaxies of the local Universe. We achieve a good comparison of the simulated velocity field to the observed velocity field obtained from the galaxy distances of the Nearby Galaxy Catalog 3000 km s−1 (NBG-3k, Tully et al.). At the end, we compare the two-point correlation function of both the 2MRS galaxies and the dark matter particles of the simulation. We conclude that this method is a very promising technique for exploring the dynamics and structure of the Universe in our neighbourhood.