Self-consistency of the Excursion Set Approach

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.

Excursion Set Halo Mass Function and Bias in a Stochastic Barrier Model of Ellipsoidal Collapse

We use the Excursion Set formalism to compute the properties of the halo mass distribution for a stochastic barrier model which encapsulates the main features of the ellipsoidal collapse of dark matter halos. Non-markovian corrections due to the sharp filtering of the linear density field in real space are computed with the path-integral technique introduced by Maggiore & Riotto (2010). Here, we provide a detailed derivation of the results presented in Corasaniti & Achitouv (2011) and extend the mass function analysis to higher redshift. We also derive an analytical expression for the linear halo bias. We find the analytically derived mass function to be in remarkable agreement with N-body simulation data from Tinker et al. (2008) with differences smaller than ~5% over the range of mass probed by the simulations. The excursion set solution from Monte Carlo generated random walks shows the same level of agreement, thus confirming the validity of the path-integral approach for the barrier model considered here. Similarly the analysis of the linear halo bias shows deviations no greater than 20%. Overall these results indicate that the Excursion Set formalism in combination with a realistic modeling of the conditions of halo collapse can provide an accurate description of the halo mass distribution.

Toward a Universal Formulation of the Halo Mass Function

We compute the dark matter halo mass function using the excursion set formalism for a diffusive barrier with linearly drifting average which captures the main features of the ellipsoidal collapse model. We evaluate the non-Markovian corrections due to the sharp filtering of the linear density field in real space with a path-integral method. We find an unprecedented agreement with N-body simulation data with deviations within ~5% level over the range of masses probed by the simulations. This indicates that the Excursion Set in combination with a realistic modelling of the collapse threshold can provide a robust estimation of the halo mass function.