THE PSEUDO-EVOLUTION OF HALO MASS

Journal Article · Wed Mar 20 04:00:00 EDT 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/766/1/25· OSTI ID:22167578

Diemer, Benedikt; Kravtsov, Andrey V. ^[1]; More, Surhud ^[2]

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1. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
2. Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)

A dark matter halo is commonly defined as a spherical overdensity of matter with respect to a reference density, such as the critical density or the mean matter density of the universe. Such definitions can lead to a spurious pseudo-evolution of halo mass simply due to redshift evolution of the reference density, even if its physical density profile remains constant over time. We estimate the amount of such pseudo-evolution of mass between z = 1 and 0 for halos identified in a large N-body simulation, and show that it accounts for almost the entire mass evolution of the majority of halos with M{sub 200{rho}-bar} Less-Than-Or-Equivalent-To 10{sup 12} h{sup -1} M{sub Sun} and can be a significant fraction of the apparent mass growth even for cluster-sized halos. We estimate the magnitude of the pseudo-evolution assuming that halo density profiles remain static in physical coordinates, and show that this simple model predicts the pseudo-evolution of halos identified in numerical simulations to good accuracy, albeit with significant scatter. We discuss the impact of pseudo-evolution on the evolution of the halo mass function and show that the non-evolution of the low-mass end of the halo mass function is the result of a fortuitous cancellation between pseudo-evolution and the absorption of small halos into larger hosts. We also show that the evolution of the low-mass end of the concentration-mass relation observed in simulations is almost entirely due to the pseudo-evolution of mass. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for the interpretation of the evolution of various scaling relations between the observable properties of galaxies and galaxy clusters and their halo masses.

• OSTI ID: 22167578
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 766; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ABSORPTION
ACCURACY
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CONCENTRATION RATIO
COORDINATES
COSMOLOGY
DENSITY
GALACTIC EVOLUTION
GALAXIES
GALAXY CLUSTERS
MASS
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
SCALING
SPHERICAL CONFIGURATION
UNIVERSE