Mr Rhys Poulton

I am a 3rd year PhD student in computational astrophysics under the supervision of Dr. Aaron Robotham and A/Prof. Chris Power. My work focuses on understanding the orbital properties and interaction histories of dark matter haloes and subhaloes, using large N-body simulations. In particular, my current research aims to investigate the current models for merging dark matter haloes lifetimes and create a new model using the latest generation of N-body simulations.

For my PhD, I have designed tools that can:

• Visualise merger trees extracted from N-Body simulations called MergerTree Dendrograms, written in Python.
• Track haloes after they are lost by the halo finder and fill in haloes when there are gaps in the merger trees called WhereWolf, MPI code written in Python.
• Track orbital histories of haloes from N-body simulations called OrbWeaver, written in C++/ Python.

In addition, I have helped develop tools that:

• Identify haloes in simulations called VELOCIraptor, MPI/ OpenMP code written in C++.
• Connect the haloes across time called TreeFrog, MPI/ OpenMP code written in C++.
• Manipulate VELOCIraptor data called VELOCIraptor_python_tools, written in Python.
• Populate haloes with galaxies (Semi-Analytical Model) SHARK, written in C++.
• Produce lightcones from N-body simulations Stingray, written in Fortran.