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Register a new userThe excursion set approach in non-Gaussian random fields
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Authors
Marcello Musso
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Insight into a number of interesting questions in cosmology can be obtained from the first crossing distributions of physically motivated barriers by random walks with correlated steps. We write the first crossing distribution as a formal series, ordered by the number of times a walk upcrosses the barrier. Since the fraction of walks with many upcrossings is negligible if the walk has not taken many steps, the leading order term in this series is the most relevant for understanding the massive objects of most interest in cosmology. This first term only requires knowledge of the bivariate distribution of the walk height and slope, and provides an excellent approximation to the first crossing distribution for all barriers and smoothing filters of current interest. We show that this simplicity survives when extending the approach to the case of non-Gaussian random fields. For non-Gaussian fields which are obtained by deterministic transformations of a Gaussian, the first crossing distribution is simply related to that for Gaussian walks crossing a suitably rescaled barrier. Our analysis shows that this is a useful way to think of the generic case as well. Although our study is motivated by the possibility that the primordial fluctuation field was non-Gaussian, our results are general. In particular, they do not assume the non-Gaussianity is small, so they may be viewed as the solution to an excursion set analysis of the late-time, nonlinear fluctuation field rather than the initial one. They are also useful for models in which the barrier height is determined by quantities other than the initial density, since most other physically motivated variables (such as the shear) are usually stochastic and non-Gaussian. We use the Lognormal transformation to illustrate some of our arguments.
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We compute the effect of primordial non-Gaussianity on the halo mass function, using excursion set theory. In the presence of non-Gaussianity the stochastic evolution of the smoothed density field, as a function of the smoothing scale, is non-markovian and beside local terms that generalize Press-Schechter (PS) theory, there are also memory terms, whose effect on the mass function can be computed using the formalism developed in the first paper of this series. We find that, when computing the effect of the three-point correlator on the mass function, a PS-like approach which consists in neglecting the cloud-in-cloud problem and in multiplying the final result by a fudge factor close to 2, is in principle not justified. When computed correctly in the framework of excursion set theory, in fact, the local contribution vanishes (for all odd-point correlators the contribution of the image gaussian cancels the Press-Schechter contribution rather than adding up), and the result comes entirely from non-trivial memory terms which are absent in PS theory. However it turns out that, in the limit of large halo masses, where the effect of non-Gaussianity is more relevant, these memory terms give a contribution which is the the same as that computed naively with PS theory, plus subleading terms depending on derivatives of the three-point correlator. We finally combine these results with the diffusive barrier model developed in the second paper of this series, and we find that the resulting mass function reproduces recent N-body simulations with non-Gaussian initial conditions, without the introduction of any ad hoc parameter.
The excursion set approach provides a framework for predicting how the abundance of dark matter halos depends on the initial conditions. A key ingredient of this formalism comes from the physics of halo formation: the specification of a critical overdensity threshold (barrier) which protohalos must exceed if they are to form bound virialized halos at a later time. Another ingredient is statistical, as it requires the specification of the appropriate statistical ensemble over which to average when making predictions. The excursion set approach explicitly averages over all initial positions, thus implicitly assuming that the appropriate ensemble is that associated with randomly chosen positions in space, rather than special positions such as peaks of the initial density field. Since halos are known to collapse around special positions, it is not clear that the physical and statistical assumptions which underlie the excursion set approach are self-consistent. We argue that they are at least for low mass halos, and illustrate by comparing our excursion set predictions with numerical data from the DEUS simulations.
A sizeable level of non-Gaussianity in the primordial cosmological perturbations may be induced by a large trispectrum, i.e. by a large connected four-point correlation function. We compute the effect of a primordial non-Gaussian trispectrum on the halo mass function, within excursion set theory. We use the formalism that we have developed in a previous series of papers and which allows us to take into account the fact that, in the presence of non-Gaussianity, the stochastic evolution of the smoothed density field, as a function of the smoothing scale, is non-markovian. In the large mass limit, the leading-order term that we find agrees with the leading-order term of the results found in the literature using a more heuristic Press-Schecther (PS)-type approach. Our approach however also allows us to evaluate consistently the subleading terms, which depend not only on the four-point cumulant but also on derivatives of the four-point correlator, and which cannot be obtained within non-Gaussian extensions of PS theory. We perform explicitly the computation up to next-to-leading order.
We present a new method to compute the first crossing distribution in excursion set theory for the case of correlated random walks. We use a combination of the path integral formalism of Maggiore & Riotto, and the integral equation solution of Zhang & Hui, and Benson et al. to find a numerically robust and convenient algorithm to derive the first crossing distribution in terms of a perturbative expansion around the limit of an uncorrelated random walk. We apply this methodology to the specific case of a Gaussian random density field filtered with a Gaussian smoothing function. By comparing our solutions to results from Monte Carlo calculations of the first crossing distribution we demonstrate that our method accurate for power spectra $P(k)propto k^n$ for $n=1$, becoming less accurate for smaller values of $n$. It is therefore complementary to the method of Musso & Sheth, which will therefore be more useful for standard $Lambda$CDM power spectra. Our approach is quite general, and can be adapted to other smoothing functions, and also to non-Gaussian density fields.
The simplest stochastic halo formation models assume that the traceless part of the shear field acts to increase the initial overdensity (or decrease the underdensity) that a protohalo (or protovoid) must have if it is to form by the present time. Equivalently, it is the difference between the overdensity and (the square root of the) shear that must be larger than a threshold value. To estimate the effect this has on halo abundances using the excursion set approach, we must solve for the first crossing distribution of a barrier of constant height by the random walks associated with the difference, which is now (even for Gaussian initial conditions) a non-Gaussian variate. The correlation properties of such non-Gaussian walks are inherited from those of the density and the shear, and, since they are independent processes, the solution is in fact remarkably simple. We show that this provides an easy way to understand why earlier heuristic arguments about the nature of the solution worked so well. In addition to modelling halos and voids, this potentially simplifies models of the abundance and spatial distribution of filaments and sheets in the cosmic web.
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