The mass accretion history of dark matter haloes down to Earth mass

Abstract

We take advantage of the unprecedented dynamical range provided by the "Cosmic-Zoom" project to study the mass accretion history (MAH) of present-day dark matter haloes over the entire mass range present in the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm when the dark matter is made of weakly interacting massive particles of mass $100\mathrm{GeV}$. In particular, we complement previous studies by exploring the MAHs of haloes with mass from $10^8{h}^{-1}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ down to Earth mass, $10^{-6}{h}^{-1}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$. The formation redshift of low-mass haloes anti-correlates weakly with mass, peaking at $z=3$ for haloes of mass $10^{-4}{h}^{-1}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$. Even lower masses are affected by the free-streaming cutoff in the primordial spectrum of density fluctuations and form at lower redshift. We compare MAHs in our simulations with predictions from two analytical models based on the extended Press-Schechter theory (EPS), and three empirical models derived by fitting and extrapolating either results from cosmological $N$-body simulations or Monte Carlo realizations of halo growth. All models fit our simulations reasonably well over the mass range for which they were calibrated. While the empirical models match better for more massive haloes, $M>10^{10}{h}^{-1}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$, the analytical models do better when extrapolated down to Earth mass. At the higher masses, we explore the correlation between local environment density and MAH, finding that biases are relatively weak, with typical MAHs for haloes in extremely low-density and in typical regions differing by less than $20$ percent at high redshift. If this result can be extrapolated to lower halo masses, we conclude that EPS theory predicts the hierarchical build-up of dark matter haloes quite well over the entire halo mass range.

arXiv comment11 pages, 6 figures, published in MNRAS

References in corpus (40)

• Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters
• Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution
• Concentrations of Dark Halos from their Assembly Histories
• Halos and galaxies in the standard cosmological model: results from the Bolshoi simulation
• Resolving Cosmic Structure Formation with the Millennium-II Simulation
• The physics driving the cosmic star formation history
• The age dependence of halo clustering
• The Merger Rates and Mass Assembly Histories of Dark Matter Haloes in the Two Millennium Simulations
• WIMP dark matter candidates and searches - current status and future prospects
• The Dependence of Halo Clustering on Halo Formation History, Concentration, and Occupation
• Evolution of structure in cold dark matter universes
• COLOSSUS: A python toolkit for cosmology, large-scale structure, and dark matter halos
• Accurate universal models for the mass accretion histories and concentrations of dark matter halos
• Simulating cosmic structure formation with the GADGET-4 code
• How to Plant a Merger Tree
• Assembly bias in the clustering of dark matter haloes
• On the environmental dependence of halo formation
• The Universal Mass Accretion History of CDM Haloes
• Generating Dark Matter Halo Merger Trees
• The Mass-Concentration-Redshift Relation of Cold Dark Matter Halos
• Natural Downsizing in Hierarchical Galaxy Formation
• Universal structure of dark matter haloes over a mass range of 20 orders of magnitude
• The accretion history of dark matter halos III: A physical model for the concentration-mass relation
• A marked correlation function analysis of halo formation times in the Millennium Simulation
• Mass Accretion Rates and Histories of Dark Matter Haloes
• The Mass Profile and Accretion History of Cold Dark Matter Halos
• The Population of Dark Matter Subhaloes: Mass Functions and Average Mass Loss Rates
• On Halo Formation Times and Assembly Bias
• The growth of dark matter halos: evidence for significant smooth accretion
• One simulation to fit them all - changing the background parameters of a cosmological N-body simulation
• The accretion history of dark matter halos I: The physical origin of the universal function
• Constructing Merger Trees that Mimic N-Body Simulations
• Early structure in LCDM
• Formation times, mass growth histories and concentrations of dark matter haloes
• Coming of Age in the Dark Sector: How Dark Matter Haloes grow their Gravitational Potential Wells
• An analytical model for the accretion of dark matter subhalos
• The earliest stars and their relics in the Milky Way
• What Do Dark Matter Properties Tell Us About Their Mass Assembly Histories?
• Assembly history of subhalo populations in galactic and cluster sized dark haloes
• Mass distribution and accretion of sub-halos

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Excursion Sets with a "Perfect" Collapse Model
• Prediction of Individual Halo Concentrations Across Cosmic Time Using Neural Networks