MASS FUNCTION PREDICTIONS BEYOND ΛCDM

By Suman Bhattacharya, Katrin Heitmann, M. White, Zarija Lukic, C. Wagner, Salman Habib. 2010

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The statistics of dark matter halos is an essential component of precision cosmology. The mass distribution of halos, as specified by the halo mass function, is a key input for several cosmological probes. The sizes of N-body simulations are now such that, for the most part, results need no longer be statistics-limited, but are still subject to various systematic uncertainties. Discrepancies in the results of simulation campaigns for the halo mass function remain in excess of statistical uncertainties and of roughly the same size as the error limits set by near-future observations; we investigate and discuss some of the reasons for these differences. Quantifying error sources and compensating for them as appropriate, we carry out a high-statistics study of dark matter halos from 67 N-body simulations to investigate the mass function and its evolution for a reference ΛCDM cosmology and for a set of wCDM cosmologies. For the reference ΛCDM cosmology (close to WMAP5), we quantify the breaking of universality in the form of the mass function as a function of redshift, finding an evolution of as much as 10% away from the universal form between redshifts z = 0 and z = 2. For cosmologies very close to this reference we provide a fitting formula to our results for the (evolving) ΛCDM mass function over a mass range of 6 × 1011–3 × 1015 M☉ to an estimated accuracy of about 2%. The set of wCDM cosmologies is taken from the Coyote Universe simulation suite. The mass functions from this suite (which includes a ΛCDM cosmology and others with w ≃ −1) are described by the fitting formula for the reference ΛCDM case at an accuracy level of 10%, but with clear systematic deviations. We argue that, as a consequence, fitting formulae based on a universal form for the mass function may have limited utility in high-precision cosmological applications.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/624e53252259e88e7b634ec3527379851c638f64

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Citations in the corpus

COLOSSUS: A Python Toolkit for Cosmology, Large-scale Structure, and Dark Matter Halos (2017, methodology): “…Calibration for SO halos with 200 ≤ ∆m ≤ 3200, explicit z-dependence crocce10 Crocce et al. 2010 A calibration based on numerical results (FOF, uses δc(z)) bhattacharya11 Bhattacharya et al. 2011 A calibration based on numerical results (FOF, explicit z-dependence) courtin11 Courtin et al. 2011…”
Baryon impact on the halo mass function: Fitting formulae and implications for cluster cosmology (2015, methodology): “More recently, Bhattacharya et al. (2011) have used a set of ΛCDM and wCDM simulations to investigate the dependence of the FoF HMF on cosmological parameters.”
Observational probes of cosmic acceleration (2012, methodology): “For instance, Bhattacharya et al. (2011) find that mass functions in their suite of wCDM simulations — which are calculated using friendsof-friends halo finders — deviate by up to 10% from a fitting formula calibrated on their ΛCDM simulation suite.”
Mapping stellar content to dark matter haloes using galaxy clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing in the SDSS DR7 (2015, background): “…in predictions of the halo mass and bias functions is three–fold: i) the Universe may have a non-ΛCDM cosmology (for halo statistics beyond ΛCDM, see Bhattacharya et al. 2011; Cui et al. 2012a; Ichiki & Takada 2012; Murray et al. 2013; Zhang et al. 2013; LoVerde 2014) or a different set of…”
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS FROM SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH-SELECTED CLUSTERS WITH X-RAY OBSERVATIONS IN THE FIRST 178 deg2 OF THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE SURVEY (2011, unknown): “Large-volume numerical simulations have calibrated a “universal” cluster mass function over a broad range of cosmologies at a level better than current experimental uncertainties (e.g., Jenkins et al. 2001; Warren et al. 2006; Tinker et al. 2008; Bhattacharya et al. 2011).”
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS FROM GALAXY CLUSTERS IN THE 2500 SQUARE-DEGREE SPT-SZ SURVEY (2016, background): “As this abundance can be predicted with sufficient accuracy for a given cosmology (Tinker et al. 2008; Bhattacharya et al. 2011; Holder & Carlstrom 2001), even modest measurements of cluster abundance can yield powerful cosmological constraints.”
The halo mass function through the cosmic ages (2012, methodology): “We note that the fits by Reed et al. (2007), Crocce et al. (2010) and Bhattacharya et al. (2011) are redshift dependent, while Press & Schechter (1974), Sheth & Tormen (2002) and Courtin et al. (2011) are parametrized using δc(z).”
DARK MATTER HALO PROFILES OF MASSIVE CLUSTERS: THEORY VERSUS OBSERVATIONS (2011, methodology): “This simulation was also used to derive a high-precision ΛCDM mass function prediction (Bhattacharya et al. 2011).”
Cosmology with massive neutrinos II: on the universality of the halo mass function and bias (2013, background): “1) is an empirical formula and other works propose slightly different corrections (see for instance [46]).”
The MICE Grand Challenge lightcone simulation – II. Halo and galaxy catalogues (2013, methodology): “We note that in defining our halo masses we have accounted for the Warren correction for discrete halo sampling,9 unless otherwise stated (Warren et al. 2006; Crocce et al. 2010; Bhattacharya et al. 2011 and ref. therein).”
The MassiveBlack-II simulation: The evolution of haloes and galaxies to z ~ 0 (2014, methodology): “On the other hand, the FOF MF has been shown to be more universal (Jenkins et al. 2001; Bhattacharya et al. 2011; Watson et al. 2013) and this is also seen in the lower panels of Fig.”
THE COYOTE UNIVERSE EXTENDED: PRECISION EMULATION OF THE MATTER POWER SPECTRUM (2013, background): “However, as shown in, e.g., Bhattacharya et al. (2011), universality for wCDM models only holds at the ∼10% level of accuracy.”