The effect of local universe constraints on halo abundance and clustering

Abstract

Cosmological $N$-body simulations of the dark matter component of the universe typically use initial conditions with a fixed power spectrum and random phases of the density field, leading to structure consistent with the local distribution of galaxies only in a statistical sense. It is, however, possible to infer the initial phases which lead to the configuration of galaxies and clusters that we see around us. We analyse the CSiBORG suite of 101 simulations, formed by constraining the density field within 155 Mpc$/h$ with dark matter particle mass $4.38\times 10^9{M}_{\odot }$, to quantify the degree to which constraints imposed on 2.65 Mpc$/h$ scales reduce variance in the halo mass function and halo-halo cross-correlation function on a range of scales. This is achieved by contrasting CSiBORG with a subset of the unconstrained Quijote simulations and expectations for the $\Lambda$CDM average. Using the FOF, PHEW and HOP halofinders, we show that the CSiBORG suite beats cosmic variance at large mass scales ($\gtrsim 10^{14}{M}_{\odot }/h$), which are most strongly constrained by the initial conditions, and exhibits a significant halo-halo cross-correlation out to $\sim 30$ Mpc$/h$. Moreover, the effect of the constraints percolates down to lower mass objects and to scales below those on which they are imposed. Finally, we develop an algorithm to "twin" halos between realisations and show that approximately 50% of halos with mass greater than $10^{15}{M}_{\odot }/h$ can be identified in all realisations of the CSiBORG suite. We make the CSiBORG halo catalogues publicly available for future applications requiring knowledge of the local halo field.

11 pages, 8 figures; minor revision, as accepted for publication by MNRAS

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• Evaluating the variance of individual halo properties in constrained cosmological simulations
• Learning the Universe: Learning to Optimize Cosmic Initial Conditions with Non-Differentiable Structure Formation Models
• The galaxy-environment connection revealed by constrained simulations
• The Manticore Project II: Bayesian digital twins of cosmic structure across the SDSS and BOSS volumes