Computation of the halo mass function using physical collapse parameters: application to non-standard cosmologies

Journal Article · Wed Oct 01 04:00:00 EDT 2014 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2014/10/077· OSTI ID:22375776

Achitouv, I.; Weller, J. ^[1]; Wagner, C. ^[2]

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1. Universitäts-Sternwarte München, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 München (Germany)
2. Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 1, 5748 Garching bei München (Germany)

In this article we compare the halo mass function predicted by the excursion set theory with a drifting diffusive barrier against the results of N-body simulations for several cosmological models. This includes the standard ΛCDM case for a large range of halo masses, models with different types of primordial non-Gaussianity, and the Ratra-Peebles quintessence model of Dark Energy. We show that in all those cosmological scenarios, the abundance of dark matter halos can be described by a drifting diffusive barrier, where the two parameters describing the barrier have physical content. In the case of the Gaussian ΛCDM, the statistics are precise enough to actually predict those parameters at different redshifts from the initial conditions. Furthermore, we found that the stochasticity in the barrier is non-negligible making the simple deterministic spherical collapse model a bad approximation even at very high halo masses. We also show that using the standard excursion set approach with a barrier inspired by peak patches leads to inconsistent predictions of the halo mass function.

• OSTI ID: 22375776
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 2014; ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ABUNDANCE
APPROXIMATIONS
COSMOLOGY
FORECASTING
FUNCTIONS
MASS
NONLUMINOUS MATTER
PEAKS
RED SHIFT
SET THEORY
SIMULATION
SPHERICAL CONFIGURATION
STATISTICS