History of gevolution¶
gevolution (not capitalised, think of 'g' representing the metric tensor) is a code for late‑time, full‑GR cosmological simulations of structure formation. The main developer is Julian Adamek, who started the project in Geneva, with key contributions from David Daverio, Ruth Durrer, and Martin Kunz.
The first public version appeared in 2015 and was featured in Nature Physics, followed by a comprehensive code paper.
The code builds on the LATfield2 back‑end, developed by David Daverio et al. during his Ph.D. at the University of Geneva (paper). LATfield2 provides the MPI parallelisation and data structures; it started as a lattice code for topological defects. For gevolution‑1.3/gevolution‑2.0 (2026), it was further optimised with more performant data structures plus shared‑memory and GPU parallelisation.
gevolution‑1.2 (2020) added major functionality, including on‑the‑fly lightcone construction.
In parallel, several forks applied the numerical framework to dark‑sector models. In 2019, Farbod Hassani et al. released k‑evolution, solving K‑essence clustering dark energy within the effective field theory of dark energy (including nonlinear corrections). The linear‑regime extension to the KGB model followed in 2025 by Ahmad Nouri‑Zonoz et al. Also in 2019, Lorenzo Reverberi and David Daverio developed fRevolution (f(R) gravity; not open‑source). Øyvind Christiansen et al. developed asevolution in 2023, solving relativistic scalar‑field equations for a non‑minimally coupled degree of freedom forming late‑time topological defects; it was extended to gravitational‑wave emission in 2025 (paper). A complex‑scalar version, norns, forming cosmic strings, followed in 2026.
Together, these milestones demonstrate gevolution as a versatile framework for testing extensions of standard cosmology in nonlinear, dynamical, and relativistic regimes, with a practical lightcone finder enabling direct comparisons to observations.
Contributors¶
Julian Adamek
Øyvind Christiansen
Farbod Hassani
Ahmadreza Nourizonoz
Documentation Site Administrators¶
Julian Adamek
Øyvind Christiansen
Contributions are welcome, contact contact@gevolution-code.net.