No Arabic abstract
We introduce a novel approach, the Cosmological Trajectories Method (CTM), to model nonlinear structure formation in the Universe by expanding gravitationally-induced particle trajectories around the Zeldovich approximation. A new Beyond Zeldovich approximation is presented, which expands the CTM to leading second-order in the gravitational interaction and allows for post-Born gravitational scattering. In the Beyond Zeldovich approximation we derive the exact expression for the matter clustering power spectrum. This is calculated to leading order and is available in the CTM MODULE. We compare the Beyond Zeldovich approximation power spectrum and correlation function to other methods including 1-loop Standard Perturbation Theory (SPT), 1-loop Lagrangian Perturbation Theory (LPT) and Convolution Lagrangian Perturbation Theory (CLPT). We find that the Beyond Zeldovich approximation power spectrum performs well, matching simulations to within $pm{10}%$, on mildly non-linear scales, and at redshifts above $z=1$ it outperforms the Zeldovich approximation. We also find that the Beyond Zeldovich approximation models the BAO peak in the correlation function at $z=0$ more accurately, to within $pm{5}%$ of simulations, than the Zeldovich approximation, SPT 1-loop and CLPT.
We present a simple physically motivated picture for the mildly non-linear regime of structure formation, which captures the effects of the bulk flows. We apply this picture to develop a method to significantly reduce the sample variance in cosmological N-body simulations at the scales relevant to the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO). The results presented in this paper will allow for a speed-up of an order of magnitude (or more) in the scanning of the cosmological parameter space using N-body simulations for studies which require a good handle of the mildly non-linear regime, such as those targeting the BAO. Using this physical picture we develop a simple formula, which allows for the rapid calculation of the mildly non-linear matter power spectrum to percent level accuracy, and for robust estimation of the BAO scale.
We obtain approximations for the CDM particle trajectories starting from Lagrangian Perturbation Theory. These estimates for the CDM trajectories result in approximations for the density in real and redshift space, as well as for the momentum density that are better than what standard Eulerian and Lagrangian perturbation theory give. For the real space density, we find that our proposed approximation gives a good cross-correlation (>95%) with the non-linear density down to scales almost twice smaller than the non-linear scale, and six times smaller than the corresponding scale obtained using linear theory. This allows for a speed-up of an order of magnitude or more in the scanning of the cosmological parameter space with N-body simulations for the scales relevant for the baryon acoustic oscillations. Possible future applications of our method include baryon acoustic peak reconstruction, building mock galaxy catalogs, momentum field reconstruction.
We propose two effective parameters that fully characterise galactic-scale structure formation at high redshifts ($zgtrsim5$) for a variety of dark matter (DM) models that have a primordial cutoff in the matter power spectrum. Our description is within the recently proposed ETHOS framework and includes standard thermal Warm DM (WDM) and models with dark acoustic oscillations (DAOs). To define and explore this parameter space, we use high-redshift zoom-in simulations that cover a wide range of non-linear scales from those where DM should behave as CDM ($ksim10,h,{rm Mpc}^{-1}$), down to those characterised by the onset of galaxy formation ($ksim500,h,{rm Mpc}^{-1}$). We show that the two physically motivated parameters $h_{rm peak}$ and $k_{rm peak}$, the amplitude and scale of the first DAO peak, respectively, are sufficient to parametrize the linear matter power spectrum and classify the DM models as belonging to effective non-linear structure formation regions. These are defined by their relative departure from Cold DM ($k_{rm peak}rightarrowinfty$) and WDM ($h_{rm peak}=0$) according to the non-linear matter power spectrum and halo mass function. We identify a region where the DAOs still leave a distinct signature from WDM down to $z=5$, while a large part of the DAO parameter space is shown to be degenerate with WDM. Our framework can then be used to seamlessly connect a broad class of particle DM models to their structure formation properties at high redshift without the need of additional $N$-body simulations.
Interest rises to exploit the full shape information of the galaxy power spectrum, as well as pushing analyses to smaller non-linear scales. Here I use the halo model to quantify the information content in the tomographic angular power spectrum of galaxies, for future high resolution surveys : Euclid and SKA2. I study how this information varies as a function of the scale cut applied, either with angular cut $ell_{max}$ or physical cut kmax. For this, I use analytical covariances with the most complete census of non-Gaussian terms, which proves critical. I find that the Fisher information on most cosmological and astrophysical parameters follows a striking behaviour. Beyond the perturbative regime we first get decreasing returns : the information keeps rising but the slope slows down until reaching a saturation. The location of this plateau is a bit beyond the reach of current modeling methods : k $sim$ 2 Mpc$^{-1}$ and slightly depends on the parameter and redshift bin considered. I explain the origin of this plateau, which is due to non-linear effects both on the power spectrum, and more importantly on non-Gaussian covariance terms. Then, pushing further on I find that information rises again in the highly non-linear regime. I find that the cosmological information in this small scale miracle can indeed be disentangled from astrophysical information and yield large improvements. Pushing SKA2 analysis from kmax=1 Mpc$^{-1}$ to kmax=10 Mpc$^{-1}$ can improve the error bar on $sigma_8$ by a factor 9 and the error bar on the Dark Energy equation of state $w_0$ by a factor 5. Finally I show that high order statistics beyond the power spectrum should yield further significant improvements in this regime, with the improvements increasing when pushing kmax. Data and notebooks reproducing all plots and results will be made available at url{https://github.com/fabienlacasa/SmallScaleMiracle}
Some beyond $Lambda$CDM cosmological models have dark-sector energy densities that suffer phase transitions. Fluctuations entering the horizon during such a transition can receive enhancements that ultimately show up as a distinctive bump in the power spectrum relative to a model with no phase transition. In this work, we study the non-linear evolution of such signatures in the matter power spectrum and correlation function using N-body simulations, perturbation theory and HMcode - a halo-model based method. We focus on modelling the response, computed as the ratio of statistics between a model containing a bump and one without it, rather than in the statistics themselves. Instead of working with a specific theoretical model, we inject a parametric family of Gaussian bumps into otherwise standard $Lambda$CDM spectra. We find that even when the primordial bump is located at linear scales, non-linearities tend to produce a second bump at smaller scales. This effect is understood within the halo model due to a more efficient halo formation. In redshift space these nonlinear signatures are partially erased because of the damping along the line-of-sight direction produced by non-coherent motions of particles at small scales. In configuration space, the bump modulates the correlation function reflecting as oscillations in the response, as it is clear in linear Eulerian theory; however, they become damped because large scale coherent flows have some tendency to occupy regions more depleted of particles. This mechanism is explained within Lagrangian Perturbation Theory and well captured by our simulations.