Beyond ΛCDM: Exploring alternatives to the standard cosmological paradigm

The highly successful standard model of cosmology is built upon two fundamental assumptions: that structure formation proceeds hierarchically through the gravitational collapse of cold dark matter (CDM), and that the late-time expansion of the Universe is dominated by dark energy in the form of the cosmological constant, Λ. While predictions of the ΛCDM model have survived stringent tests spanning a wide range of scales, the true nature of the dark matter and dark energy remains a mystery. Here, we investigate structure formation in well-motivated, alternative scenarios. In the first half, we consider dark matter in the form of sterile neutrinos rather than CDM. We quantify the abundance, formation times and internal structure of sterile neutrino dark matter haloes, before making a detailed comparison of the properties of their substructures compared to their CDM counterparts. Using a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, we compare observable differences between sterile neutrino and CDM cosmologies and find that future observations of the high redshift Universe and faint dwarf galaxies in the Local Group can place strong constraints on the sterile neutrino scenario. In the second half, the dark matter is assumed to be CDM, but we modify the underlying theory of gravity according to the f(R) model as an alternative theory for accelerated expansion. We test the commonly-assumed quasi-static approximation in f(R) gravity simulations, confirming its validity for a wide choice of model parameters. We then propose a new method for solving the equations of motion in f(R) gravity simulations. Using a suite of high resolution simulations, we find that the new method greatly accelerates the convergence rate of the solutions, improving the efficiency of these simulations by more than a factor of 20 compared to previous methods. This new method will bring us to a new era for precision cosmological tests of gravity

The halo light cone catalogues of AbacusSummit

We describe a method for generating halo catalogues on the light-cone using the ABACUSSUMMIT suite of N-body simulations. The main application of these catalogues is the construction of realistic mock galaxy catalogues and weak lensing maps on the sky. Our algorithm associates the haloes from a set of coarsely spaced snapshots with their positions at the time of light-cone crossing by matching halo particles to on-the-fly light-cone particles. It then records the halo and particle information into an easily accessible product, which we call the ABACUSSUMMIT halo light-cone catalogues. Our recommended use of this product is in the halo mass regime of Mhalo > 2.1 × 1011 M⊙ h−1 for the base resolution simulations, i.e. haloes containing at least 100 particles, where the interpolated halo properties are most reliable. To test the validity of the obtained catalogues, we perform various visual inspections and consistency checks. In particular, we construct galaxy mock catalogues of emission-line galaxies (ELGs) at z ∼ 1 by adopting a modified version of the ABACUSHOD script, which builds on the standard halo occupation distribution (HOD) method by including various extensions. We find that the multipoles of the autocorrelation function are consistent with the predictions from the full-box snapshot, implicitly validating our algorithm. In addition, we compute and output CMB convergence maps and find that the auto- and cross-power spectrum agrees with the theoretical prediction at the sub-per-cent level

The Imprint of Cosmic Reionization on the Luminosity Function of Galaxies

The (re)ionization of hydrogen in the early universe has a profound effect on the formation of the first galaxies: by raising the gas temperature and pressure, it prevents gas from cooling into small halos, thus affecting the abundance of present-day small galaxies. Using the Galform semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, we show that two key aspects of the reionization process—when reionization takes place and the characteristic scale below which it suppresses galaxy formation—are imprinted in the luminosity function of dwarf galaxies. We focus on the luminosity function of satellites of galaxies like the Milky Way and the LMC, which is easier to measure than the luminosity function of the dwarf population as a whole. Our results show that the details of these two characteristic properties of reionization determine the shape of the luminosity distribution of satellites in a unique way, and are largely independent of the other details of the galaxy formation model. Our models generically predict a bimodality in the distribution of satellites as a function of luminosity: a population of faint satellites and population of bright satellites separated by a "valley" forged by reionization. We show that this bimodal distribution is present at high statistical significance in the combined satellite luminosity function of the Milky Way and M31. We make predictions for the expected number of satellites around LMC-mass dwarfs where the bimodality may also be measurable in future observational programs. Our preferred model predicts a total of 26 ± 10 (68% confidence) satellites brighter than M V = 0 in LMC-mass systems

RAY-RAMSES: a code for ray tracing on the fly in N-body simulations

We present a ray tracing code to compute integrated cosmological observables on the fly in AMR N-body simulations. Unlike conventional ray tracing techniques, our code takes full advantage of the time and spatial resolution attained by the N-body simulation by computing the integrals along the line of sight on a cell-by-cell basis through the AMR simulation grid. Moroever, since it runs on the fly in the N-body run, our code can produce maps of the desired observables without storing large (or any) amounts of data for post-processing. We implemented our routines in the RAMSES N-body code and tested the implementation using an example of weak lensing simulation. We analyse basic statistics of lensing convergence maps and find good agreement with semi-analytical methods. The ray tracing methodology presented here can be used in several cosmological analysis such as Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect studies as well as modified gravity. Our code can also be used in cross-checks of the more conventional methods, which can be important in tests of theory systematics in preparation for upcoming large scale structure surveys

Revealing the galaxy-halo connection in IllustrisTNG

We use the IllustrisTNG (TNG) simulations to explore the galaxy-halo connection as inferred from state-of-the-art cosmological, magnetohydrodynamical simulations. With the high mass resolution and large volume achieved by combining the 100 Mpc (TNG100) and 300 Mpc (TNG300) volumes, we establish the mean occupancy of central and satellite galaxies and their dependence on the properties of the dark matter haloes hosting them. We derive best-fitting HOD parameters from TNG100 and TNG300 for target galaxy number densities of $\bar{n}_g = 0.032\,h^3$Mpc$^{-3}$ and $\bar{n}_g = 0.016\,h^3$Mpc$^{-3}$, respectively, corresponding to a minimum galaxy stellar mass of $M_\star\sim1.9\times10^9\,{\rm M}_\odot$ and $M_\star\sim3.5\times10^9\,{\rm M}_\odot$, respectively, in hosts more massive than $10^{11}\,{\rm M}_\odot$. Consistent with previous work, we find that haloes located in dense environments, with low concentrations, later formation times, and high angular momenta are richest in their satellite population. At low mass, highly-concentrated haloes and those located in overdense regions are more likely to contain a central galaxy. The degree of environmental dependence is sensitive to the definition adopted for the physical boundary of the host halo. We examine the extent to which correlations between galaxy occupancy and halo properties are independent and demonstrate that HODs predicted by halo mass and present-day concentration capture the qualitative dependence on the remaining halo properties. At fixed halo mass, concentration is a strong predictor of the stellar mass of the central galaxy, which may play a defining role in the fate of the satellite population. The radial distribution of satellite galaxies, which exhibits a universal form across a wide range of host halo mass, is described accurately by the best-fit NFW density profile of their host haloes.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures, 1 table, comments welcom