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We present a scheme based on artificial neural networks (ANNs) to estimate the line-of-sight velocities of individual galaxies from an observed redshift–space galaxy distribution. We find an estimate of the peculiar velocity at a galaxy based on galaxy counts and barycentres in shells around it. By training the network with environmental characteristics, such as the total mass and mass centre within each shell surrounding every galaxy in redshift space, our ANN model can accurately predict the line-of-sight velocity of each individual galaxy. When this velocity is used to eliminate the RSD effect, the two-point correlation function (TPCF) in real space can be recovered with an accuracy better than 1 per cent at s > 8 |$\, h^{-1}\, \mathrm{Mpc}$|⁠ , and 4 per cent on all scales compared to ground truth. The real-space power spectrum can be recovered within 3 per cent on k < 0.5 |$\, \mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}\, h$|⁠ , and less than 5 per cent for all k modes. The quadrupole moment of the TPCF or power spectrum is almost zero down to s = 10 |$\, h^{-1}\, \mathrm{Mpc}$| or all k modes, indicating an effective correction of the spatial anisotropy caused by the RSD effect. We demonstrate that on large scales, without additional training with new data, our network is adaptable to different galaxy formation models, different cosmological models, and mock galaxy samples at high-redshifts and high biases, achieving less than 10 per cent error for scales greater than 15 |$\, h^{-1}\, \mathrm{Mpc}$|⁠. As it is sensitive to large-scale densities, it does not manage to remove Fingers of God in large clusters, but works remarkably well at recovering real-space galaxy positions elsewhere. Our scheme provides a novel way to predict the peculiar velocity of individual galaxies, to eliminate the RSD effect directly in future large galaxy surveys, and to reconstruct the three-dimensional cosmic velocity field accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Milky Way and the Local Sheet form a peculiar galaxy system in terms of the unusually low velocity dispersion in our neighbourhood and the seemingly high mass of the Milky Way for such an environment. Using the TNG300 simulation, we searched for Milky Way analogues (MWA) located in the cosmological walls with velocity dispersion in their local Hubble flow similar to the one observed around our galaxy. We find that MWAs in Local-Sheet analogues are rare, with one per (160–200 Mpc)3 volume. We find that a Sheet-like cold environment preserves, amplifies, or simplifies environmental effects on the angular momentum of galaxies. In such sheets, there are particularly strong alignments between the sheet and galaxy spins; also, these galaxies have low spin parameters. These both may relate to a lack of mergers since wall formation. We hope our results will bring awareness of the atypical nature of the Milky Way-Local Sheet system. Wrongly extrapolating local observations without a full consideration of the effect of our cosmic environment can lead to a Copernican bias in understanding the formation and evolution of the Milky Way and the nearby Universe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lagrangian algorithms to simulate the evolution of cold dark matter (CDM) are invaluable tools to generate large suites of mock halo catalogues. In this paper, we first show that the main limitation of current semi-analytical schemes to simulate the displacement of CDM is their inability to model the evolution of overdensities in the initial density field, a limit that can be circumvented by detecting halo particles in the initial conditions. We thus propose 'MUltiscale Spherical Collapse Lagrangian Evolution Using Press–Schechter' (muscle-ups), a new scheme that reproduces the results from Lagrangian perturbation theory on large scales, while improving the modelling of overdensities on small scales. In muscle-ups , we adapt the extended Press and Schechter formalism to Lagrangian algorithms of the displacement field. For regions exceeding a collapse threshold in the density smoothed at a radius R , we consider all particles within a radius R collapsed. Exploiting a multiscale smoothing of the initial density, we build a halo catalogue on the fly by optimizing the selection of halo candidates. This allows us to generate a density field with a halo mass function that matches one measured in N -body simulations. We further explicitly gather particles in each halo together in a profile, providing a numerical, Lagrangian-based implementation of the halo model. Compared to previous semi-analytical Lagrangian methods, we find that muscle-ups improves the recovery of the statistics of the density field at the level of the probability density function, the power spectrum, and the cross-correlation with the N -body result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dark matter (DM) as a Bose–Einstein condensate, such as the axionic scalar field particles of String Theory, can explain the coldness of DM on large scales. Pioneering simulations in this context predict a rich wave-like structure, with a ground state soliton core in every galaxy surrounded by a halo of excited states that interfere on the de Broglie scale. This de Broglie scale is largest for the low-mass galaxies as momentum is lower, providing a simple explanation for the wide cores of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. Here we extend these 'wave dark matter' (ψDM) predictions to the newly discovered class of 'ultra-diffuse galaxies' (UDG) that resemble dwarf spheroidal galaxies but with more extended stellar profiles. Currently, the best-studied example, 'Dragon Fly 44' (DF44), has a uniform velocity dispersion of ≃33 km s−1, extending to at least 3 kpc, that we show is reproduced by our ψDM simulations with a soliton radius of ≃0.5 kpc. In the ψDM context, we show that relatively flat dispersion profile of DF44 lies between massive galaxies with compact dense solitons, as may be present in the Milky Way on a scale of 100 pc and lower mass galaxies where the velocity dispersion declines centrally within a wide, low-density soliton, like Antlia II, of radius 3 kpc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new scheme to reconstruct the baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) signal, which contains key cosmological information, based on deep convolutional neural networks (CNN). Trained with almost no fine tuning, the network can recover large-scale modes accurately in the test set: the correlation coefficient between the true and reconstructed initial conditions reaches |$90{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$| at |$k\le 0.2 \, h\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$|⁠ , which can lead to significant improvements of the BAO signal-to-noise ratio down to |$k\simeq 0.4\, h\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$|⁠. Since this new scheme is based on the configuration-space density field in sub-boxes, it is local and less affected by survey boundaries than the standard reconstruction method, as our tests confirm. We find that the network trained in one cosmology is able to reconstruct BAO peaks in the others, i.e. recovering information lost to non-linearity independent of cosmology. The accuracy of recovered BAO peak positions is far less than that caused by the difference in the cosmology models for training and testing, suggesting that different models can be distinguished efficiently in our scheme. It is very promising that our scheme provides a different new way to extract the cosmological information from the ongoing and future large galaxy surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a public code to generate random fields with an arbitrary probability distribution function (PDF) and an arbitrary correlation function. The algorithm is cosmology independent and applicable to any stationary stochastic process over a three-dimensional grid. We implement it in the case of the matter density field, showing its benefits over the lognormal approximation, which is often used in cosmology for the generation of mock catalogues. We find that the covariance of the power spectrum from the new fast realizations is more accurate than that from a lognormal model. As a proof of concept, we also apply the new simulation scheme to the divergence of the Lagrangian displacement field. We find that information from the correlation function and the PDF of the displacement–divergence provides modest improvement over other standard analytical techniques to describe the particle field in the simulation. This suggests that further progress in this direction should come from multiscale or non-local properties of the initial matter distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cosmic web is one of the most striking features of the distribution of galaxies and dark matter on the largest scales in the Universe. It is composed of dense regions packed full of galaxies, long filamentary bridges, flattened sheets and vast low-density voids. The study of the cosmic web has focused primarily on the identification of such features, and on understanding the environmental effects on galaxy formation and halo assembly. As such, a variety of different methods have been devised to classify the cosmic web - depending on the data at hand, be it numerical simulations, large sky surveys or other. In this paper, we bring 12 of these methods together and apply them to the same data set in order to understand how they compare. In general, these cosmic-web classifiers have been designed with different cosmological goals in mind, and to study different questions. Therefore, one would not a priori expect agreement between different techniques; however, many of these methods do converge on the identification of specific features. In this paper, we study the agreements and disparities of the different methods. For example, each method finds that knots inhabit higher density regions than filaments, etc. and that voids have the lowest densities. For a given web environment, we find a substantial overlap in the density range assigned by each web classification scheme. We also compare classifications on a halo-by-halo basis; for example, we find that 9 of 12 methods classify around a third of group-mass haloes (i.e. Mhalo ~ 1013.5 h-1M☉) as being in filaments. Lastly, so that any future cosmic-web classification scheme can be compared to the 12 methods used here, we have made all the data used in this paper public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have searched for the signature of cosmic voids in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), in both the Planck temperature and lensing-convergence maps; voids should give decrements in both. We use ZOBOV voids from the Data Release 12 Sloan Digital Sky Survey CMASS galaxy sample. We base our analysis on N-body simulations, to avoid a posteriori bias. For the first time, we detect the signature of voids in CMB lensing: the significance is 3.2σ, close to ⋀ cold dark matter (⋀CDM) in both amplitude and projected density-profile shape. A temperature dip is also seen, at modest significance (2.3σ), with an amplitude about six times the prediction. This temperature signal is induced mostly by voids with radii between 100 and 150 h-1 Mpc, while the lensing signal is mostly contributed by smaller voids - as expected; lensing relates directly to density, while integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect (ISW) depends on gravitational potential. The void abundance in observations and simulations agree as well. We also repeated the analysis excluding lower significance voids: no lensing signal is detected with an upper limit of about twice the ⋀CDM prediction. But the mean temperature decrement now becomes non-zero at the 3.7σ level (similar to that found by Granett et al.), with an amplitude about 20 times the prediction. However, the observed dependence of temperature on void size is in poor agreement with simulations, whereas the lensing results are consistent with⋀CDM theory. Thus, the overall tension between theory and observations does not favour non-standard theories of gravity, despite the hints of an enhanced amplitude for the ISW effect from voids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We discuss an idealized model of halo formation, in which a collapsing halo node is tetrahedral, with a filament extruding from each of its four faces, and with a wall connecting each pair of filaments. In the model, filaments generally spin when they form, and the halo spins if and only if there is some rotation in filaments. This is the simplest possible fully three-dimensional halo collapse in the 'origami approximation', in which voids are irrotational, and the dark-matter sheet out of which dark-matter structures form is allowed to fold in position-velocity phase space, but not stretch (i.e. it cannot vary in density along a stream). Up to an overall scaling, the four filament directions, and only three other quantities, such as filament spins, suffice to determine all of the collapse's properties: the shape, mass, and spin of the halo; the densities per unit length and spins of all filaments; and masses per unit area of the walls. If the filaments are arranged regular-tetrahedrally, filament properties obey simple laws, reminiscent of angularmomentum conservation. The model may be most useful in understanding spin correlations between neighbouring galaxies joined by filaments; these correlations would give intrinsic alignments between galaxies, essential to understand for accurate cosmological weak-lensing measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gaussianization transform has been proposed as a method to remove the issues of scaledependent galaxy bias and non-linearity from galaxy clustering statistics, but these benefits have yet to be thoroughly tested for realistic galaxy samples. In this paper, we test the effectiveness of the Gaussianization transform for different galaxy types by applying it to realistic simulated blue and red galaxy samples. We show that in real space, the shapes of the Gaussianized power spectra of both red and blue galaxies agree with that of the underlying dark matter, with the initial power spectrum, and with each other to smaller scales than do the statistics of the usual (untransformed) density field. However, we find that the agreement in the Gaussianized statistics breaks down in redshift space. We attribute this to the fact that red and blue galaxies exhibit very different fingers of god in redshift space. After applying a finger-of-god compression, the agreement on small scales between the Gaussianized power spectra is restored. We also compare the Gaussianization transform to the clipped galaxy density field and find that while both methods are effective in real space, they have more complicated behaviour in redshift space. Overall, we find that Gaussianization can be useful in recovering the shape of the underlying dark-matter power spectrum to k ~ 0.5 h Mpc-1 and of the initial power spectrum to k ~ 0.4 h Mpc-1 in certain cases at z = 0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We reproduce the galaxy clustering catalogue from the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey Final Data Release (BOSS DR11&DR12) with high fidelity on all relevant scales in order to allow a robust analysis of baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift space distortions. We have generated (6000) 12 288 MultiDark PATCHY BOSS (DR11) DR12 light cones corresponding to an effective volume of ∼192 000 [h-1 Gpc]³ (the largest ever simulated volume), including cosmic evolution in the redshift range from 0.15 to 0.75. The mocks have been calibrated using a reference galaxy catalogue based on the halo abundance matching modelling of the BOSS DR11&DR12 galaxy clustering data and on the data themselves. The production follows three steps. First, we apply the PATCHY code to generate a dark matter field and an object distribution including non-linear stochastic galaxy bias. Secondly, we run the halo/stellar distribution reconstruction HADRON code to assign masses to the various objects. This step uses the mass distribution as a function of local density and non-local indicators (i.e. tidal field tensor eigenvalues and relative halo exclusion separation for massive objects) from the reference simulation applied to the corresponding patchy dark matter and galaxy distribution. Finally, we apply the SUGAR code to build the light cones. The resulting MultiDarkPATCHY mock light cones reproduce the number density, selection function, survey geometry, and in general within 1s, for arbitrary stellar mass bins, the power spectrum up to k = 0.3 h Mpc-1, the two-point correlation functions down to a few Mpc scales, and the three-point statistics of the BOSS DR11&DR12 galaxy samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare analytical predictions of void volume functions to those measured from N-body simulations, detecting voids with the zobov void finder. We push to very small, non-linear voids, below few Mpc radius, by considering the unsampled dark matter density field. We also study the case where voids are identified using haloes. We develop analytical formula for the void abundance of both the excursion set approach and the peaks formalism. These formulas are valid for random walks smoothed with a top-hat filter in real space, with a large class of realistic barrier models. We test the extent to which the spherical evolution approximation, which forms the basis of the analytical predictions, models the highly aspherical voids that occur in the cosmic web, and are found by a watershed-based algorithm such as zobov. We show that the volume function returned by zobov is quite sensitive to the choice of treatment of subvoids, a fact that has not been appreciated previously. For reasonable choices of subvoid exclusion, we find that the Lagrangian density δv of the zobov voids - which is predicted to be a constant δv -2.7 in the spherical evolution model - is different from the predicted value, showing substantial scatter and scale dependence. This result applies to voids identified at z = 0 with effective radius between 1 and 10?h-1 Mpc. Our analytical approximations are flexible enough to give a good description of the resulting volume function; however, this happens for choices of parameter values that are different from those suggested by the spherical evolution assumption. We conclude that analytical models for voids must move away from the spherical approximation in order to be applied successfully to observations, and we discuss some possible ways forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warm dark matter (WDM) has been proposed as an alternative to cold dark matter (CDM), to resolve issues such as the apparent lack of satellites around the MilkyWay. Even ifWDMis not the answer to observational issues, it is essential to constrain the nature of the dark matter. The effect of WDM on haloes has been extensively studied, but the small-scale initial smoothing in WDM also affects the present-day cosmic web and voids. It suppresses the cosmic 'subweb' inside voids, and the formation of both void haloes and subvoids. In N-body simulations run with different assumed WDM masses, we identify voids with the ZOBOV algorithm, and cosmic-web components with the ORIGAMI algorithm. As dark-matter warmth increases (i.e. particle mass decreases), void density minima grow shallower, while void edges change little. Also, the number of subvoids decreases. The density field in voids is particularly insensitive to baryonic physics, so if void density profiles and minima could be measured observationally, they would offer a valuable probe of the nature of dark matter. Furthermore, filaments and walls become cleaner, as the substructures in between have been smoothed out; this leads to a clear, mid-range peak in the density PDF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the shapes of subhalo distributions from four dark-matter-only simulations of Milky Way-type haloes. Comparing the shapes derived from the subhalo distributions at high resolution to those of the underlying dark matter fields, we find the former to be more triaxial if the analysis is restricted to massive subhaloes. For three of the four analysed haloes, the increased triaxiality of the distributions of massive subhaloes can be explained by a systematic effect caused by the low number of objects. Subhaloes of the fourth halo show indications for anisotropic accretion via their strong triaxial distribution and orbit alignment with respect to the dark matter field. These results are independent of the employed subhalo finder. Comparing the shape of the observed Milky Way satellite distribution to those of high-resolution subhalo samples from simulations, we find agreement for samples of bright satellites, but significant deviations if faint satellites are included in the analysis. These deviations might result from observational incompleteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the study of the integrated Sachs–Wolfe (ISW) effect, we construct a template of the projected density distribution up to redshift z ≃ 0.7 by using the luminous galaxies (LGs) from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 8 (DR8). We use a photometric redshift catalogue trained with more than a hundred thousand galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) in the SDSS DR8 imaging area covering nearly one-quarter of the sky. We consider two different LG samples whose selection matches that of SDSS-III/BOSS: the low-redshift sample (LOWZ, z ∈ [0.15, 0.5]) and the constant mass sample (CMASS, z ∈ [0.4, 0.7]). When building the galaxy angular density templates we use the information from star density, survey footprint, seeing conditions, sky emission, dust extinction and airmass to explore the impact of these artefacts on each of the two LG samples. In agreement with previous studies, we find that the CMASS sample is particularly sensitive to Galactic stars, which dominate the contribution to the auto-angular power spectrum below ℓ = 7. Other potential systematics affect mostly the very low multipole range (ℓ ∈ [2, 7]), but leave fluctuations on smaller scales practically unchanged. The resulting angular power spectra in the multipole range ℓ ∈ [2, 100] for the LOWZ, CMASS and LOWZ+CMASS samples are compatible with linear Λ cold dark matter (ΛCDM) expectations and constant bias values of b = 1.98 ± 0.11, 2.08 ± 0.14 and 1.88 ± 0.11, respectively, with no traces of non-Gaussianity signatures, i.e. $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm local}=59\pm 75$ at 95 per cent confidence level for the full LOWZ+CMASS sample in the multipole range ℓ ∈ [4, 100]. After cross-correlating Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe 9-year data with the LOWZ+CMASS LG projected density field, the ISW signal is detected at the level of 1.62–1.69σ. While this result is in close agreement with theoretical expectations and predictions from realistic Monte Carlo simulations in the concordance ΛCDM model, it cannot rule out by itself an Einstein–de Sitter scenario, and has a moderately low signal compared to previous studies conducted on subsets of this LG sample. We discuss possible reasons for this apparent discrepancy, and point to uncertainties in the galaxy survey systematics as most likely sources of confusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a study of a comparison of spin distributions of subhaloes found associated with a host halo. The subhaloes are found within two cosmological simulation families of Milky Way-like galaxies, namely the Aquarius and GHALO simulations. These two simulations use different gravity codes and cosmologies. We employ 10 different substructure finders, which span a wide range of methodologies from simple overdensity in configuration space to full 6D phase space analysis of particles. We subject the results to a common post-processing pipeline to analyse the results in a consistent manner, recovering the dimensionless spin parameter. We find that spin distribution is an excellent indicator of how well the removal of background particles (unbinding) has been carried out. We also find that the spin distribution decreases for substructures the nearer they are to the host haloes, and that the value of the spin parameter rises with enclosed mass towards the edge of the substructure. Finally, subhaloes are less rotationally supported than field haloes, with the peak of the spin distribution having a lower spin parameter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We examine the Lagrangian divergence of the displacement field, arguably a more natural object than the density in a Lagrangian description of a cosmological large-scale structure. This quantity, which we denote ψ, quantifies the stretching and distortion of the initially homogeneous lattice of dark-matter particles in the universe. ψ encodes similar information as the density, but the correspondence has subtleties. It corresponds better to the log-density A than the overdensity δ. A Gaussian distribution in ψ produces a distribution in A with slight skewness; in δ, we find that in many cases the skewness is further increased by 3. A local spherical-collapse-based (SC) fit found by Bernardeau gives a formula for ψ's particle-by-particle behaviour that works quite well, better than applying the Lagrangian perturbation theory (LPT) at first or second (2LPT) order. In 2LPT, there is a roughly parabolic relation between initial and final ψ that can give overdensities in deep voids, so low-redshift, high-resolution 2LPT realizations should be used with caution. The SC fit excels at predicting ψ until streams cross; then, for particles forming haloes, ψ plummets as in a waterfall to -3. This gives a new method for producing N-particle realizations. Compared to LPT realizations, such SC realizations give reduced stream-crossing, and better visual and 1-point-probability density function (PDF) correspondence to the results of full gravity. LPT, on the other hand, predicts large-scale flows and the large-scale power-spectrum amplitude better, unless an empirical correction is added to the SC formula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In a cold dark matter universe, cosmological structure formation proceeds in rough analogy to origami folding. Dark matter occupies a three-dimensional 'sheet' of free-fall observers, non-intersecting in six-dimensional velocity-position phase space. At early times, the sheet was flat like an origami sheet, i.e. velocities were essentially zero, but as time passes, the sheet folds up to form cosmic structure. This paper further illustrates this analogy, and clarifies a Lagrangian definition of caustics and streams: caustics are two-dimensional surfaces in this initial sheet along which it folds, tessellating Lagrangian space into a set of three-dimensional regions, i.e. streams. The main scientific result of this paper is that streams may be coloured by only two colours, with no two neighbouring streams (i.e. streams on either side of a caustic surface) coloured the same. The two colours correspond to positive and negative parities of local Lagrangian volumes. This is a severe restriction on the connectivity and therefore arrangement of streams in Lagrangian space, since arbitrarily many colours can be necessary to colour a general arrangement of three-dimensional regions. This stream two-colourability has consequences from graph theory, which we explain. Then, using N-body simulations, we test how these caustics correspond in Lagrangian space to the boundaries of haloes, filaments and walls. We also test how well outer caustics correspond to a Zel'dovich-approximation prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We present a detailed comparison of the substructure properties of a single Milky Way sized dark matter halo from the Aquarius suite at five different resolutions, as identified by a variety of different (sub)halo finders for simulations of cosmic structure formation. These finders span a wide range of techniques and methodologies to extract and quantify substructures within a larger non-homogeneous background density (e.g. a host halo). This includes real-space-, phase-space-, velocity-space- and time-space-based finders, as well as finders employing a Voronoi tessellation, Friends-of-Friends techniques or refined meshes as the starting point for locating substructure. A common post-processing pipeline was used to uniformly analyse the particle lists provided by each finder. We extract quantitative and comparable measures for the subhaloes, primarily focusing on mass and the peak of the rotation curve for this particular study. We find that all of the finders agree extremely well in the presence and location of substructure and even for properties relating to the inner part of the subhalo (e.g. the maximum value of the rotation curve). For properties that rely on particles near the outer edge of the subhalo the agreement is at around the 20 per cent level. We find that the basic properties (mass and maximum circular velocity) of a subhalo can be reliably recovered if the subhalo contains more than 100 particles although its presence can be reliably inferred for a lower particle number limit of 20. We finally note that the logarithmic slope of the subhalo cumulative number count is remarkably consistent and <1 for all the finders that reached high resolution. If correct, this would indicate that the larger and more massive, respectively, substructures are the most dynamically interesting and that higher levels of the (sub)subhalo hierarchy become progressively less important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a history that dates back at least a quarter of a century, studies of voids in the large-scale structure of the Universe are bedevilled by a major problem: there exist a large number of quite different void-finding algorithms, a fact that has so far got in the way of groups comparing their results without worrying about whether such a comparison in fact makes sense. Because of the recent increased interest in voids, both in very large galaxy surveys and in detailed simulations of cosmic structure formation, this situation is very unfortunate. We here present the first systematic comparison study of 13 different void finders constructed using particles, haloes, and semi-analytical model galaxies extracted from a subvolume of the Millennium simulation. This study includes many groups that have studied voids over the past decade. We show their results and discuss their differences and agreements. As it turns out, the basic results of the various methods agree very well with each other in that they all locate a major void near the centre of our volume. Voids have very underdense centres, reaching below 10 per cent of the mean cosmic density. In addition, those void finders that allow for void galaxies show that those galaxies follow similar trends. For example, the overdensity of void galaxies brighter than is found to be smaller than about −0.8 by all our void finding algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

zobov (ZOnes Bordering On Voidness) is an algorithm that finds density depressions in a set of points, without any free parameters, or assumptions about shape. It uses the Voronoi tessellation to estimate densities, which it uses to find both voids and subvoids. It also measures probabilities that each void or subvoid arises from Poisson fluctuations. This paper describes thezobov algorithm, and the results from its application to the dark matter particles in a region of the Millennium simulation. Additionally, the paper points out an interesting high-density peak in the probability distribution of dark matter particle densities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate large-amplitude baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs) in off-diagonal entries of cosmological power-spectrum covariance matrices. These covariance-matrix BAOs describe the increased attenuation of power-spectrum BAOs caused by upward fluctuations in large-scale power. We derive an analytic approximation to covariance-matrix entries in the BAO regime, and check the analytical predictions using N-body simulations. These BAOs look much stronger than the BAOs in the power spectrum, but seem detectable only at about a 1σ level in gigaparsec-scale galaxy surveys. In estimating cosmological parameters using matter or galaxy power spectra, including the covariance-matrix BAOs can have a several per cent effect on error bar widths for some parameters directly related to the BAOs, such as the baryon fraction. Also, we find that including the numerous galaxies in small haloes in a survey can reduce error bars in these cosmological parameters more than the simple reduction in shot noise might suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the cosmological Fisher information in the non-linear dark matter power spectrum in the context of the halo model. We find that there is a plateau in information content on translinear scales which is generic to all cosmological parameters we tried. There is a rise in information on smaller scales, but we find that it is quite degenerate among different cosmological parameters (except, perhaps, the tilt). This suggests that it could be difficult to constrain cosmological parameters using the non-linear regime of the dark-matter power spectrum. We suggest ways to get around this problem, such as removing the largest haloes from consideration in survey analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new, galaxy halo model of large-scale structure, in which the galaxies entering a given sample are the fundamental objects. Haloes attach to galaxies, in contrast to the standard halo model, in which galaxies attach to haloes. The galaxy halo model pertains mainly to the relationships between the power spectra of galaxies and mass, and their cross-power spectrum. With surprisingly little input, an intuition-aiding approximation to the galaxy–matter cross-correlation coefficient emerges in terms of the halo mass dispersion. This approximation seems valid to mildly non-linear scales , allowing the measurement of the bias and the matter power spectrum from measurements of the galaxy and galaxy–matter power spectra (or correlation functions). This is especially relevant given the recent advances in precision in measurements of the galaxy–matter correlation function from weak gravitational lensing. The galaxy halo model also addresses the issue of interpreting the galaxy–matter correlation function as an average halo density profile, and provides a simple description of galaxy bias as a function of scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have developed an algorithm, calledvoboz(VOronoi BOund Zones), to find haloes in anN-body dark matter simulation; it has as little dependence on free parameters as we can manage. By using the Voronoi diagram, we achieve non-parametric,‘natural’ measurements of each particle's density and set of neighbours. We then eliminate much of the ambiguity in merging sets of particles together by identifying every possible density peak, and measuring the probability that each does not arise from Poisson noise. The main halo in a cluster tends to have a high probability, while its subhaloes tend to have lower probabilities. The first parameter invobozcontrols the subtlety of particle unbinding, and may be eliminated if one is cavalier with processor time; even if one is not, the results saturate to the parameter-free answer when the parameter is sufficiently small. The only parameter that remains, an outer density cut-off, does not influence whether or not haloes are identified, nor does it have any effect on subhaloes; it only affects the masses returned for supercluster haloes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By comparing the Point Source Catalogue Redshift (PSC z) galaxy power spectrum with the results of nested pure dark matter N-body simulations, we try to understand how infrared-selected galaxies populate dark matter haloes, paying special attention to the method of halo identification in the simulations. We thus test the hypothesis that baryonic physics negligibly affects the distribution of galaxies down to the smallest scales yet observed. We are successful in reproducing the PSC z power spectrum on scales , near our resolution limit, by imposing a central density cut-off on simulated haloes, which gives a rough minimum mass and circular velocity of haloes in which PSC z galaxies formed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the halo model, we investigate the cosmological Fisher information in the non-linear dark-matter power spectrum about the initial amplitude of linear power. We find that there is little information on ‘translinear’ scales (where the one- and two-halo terms are both significant) beyond what is on linear scales, but that additional information is present on small scales, where the one-halo term dominates. This behaviour agrees with the surprising results that Rimes & Hamilton found using N-body simulations. We argue that the translinear plateau in cumulative information arises largely from fluctuations in the numbers of large haloes in a finite volume. This implies that more information could be extracted on non-linear scales if the masses of the largest haloes in a survey are known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]