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The Effect of Corner Modes in the Initial Conditions of Cosmological Simulations

Falck, B.; McCullagh, N.; Neyrinck, M.C.; Wang, J.; Szalay, A.S.

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Authors

B. Falck

N. McCullagh

M.C. Neyrinck

J. Wang

A.S. Szalay



Abstract

In view of future high-precision large-scale structure surveys, it is important to quantify the percent and subpercent level effects in cosmological N-body simulations from which theoretical predictions are drawn. One such effect involves deciding whether to zero all modes above the one-dimensional Nyquist frequency, the so-called “corner” modes, in the initial conditions. We investigate this effect by comparing power spectra, density distribution functions, halo mass functions, and halo profiles in simulations with and without these modes. For a simulation with a mass resolution of mp ~ 1011 -h M 1 , we find that at z > 6, the difference in the matter power spectrum is large at wavenumbers above ∼80% of kNy, reducing to below 2% at all scales by z ~ 3. Including corner modes results in a better match between low- and high-resolution simulations at wavenumbers around the Nyquist frequency of the low-resolution simulation, but the effect of the corner modes is smaller than the effect of particle discreteness. The differences in mass functions are 3% for the smallest halos at z = 6 for the mp ~ 1011 -h M 1 simulation, but we find no significant difference in the stacked profiles of well-resolved halos at z  6. Thus removing power at ∣k∣ > kNy in the initial conditions of cosmological simulations has a small effect on small scales and high redshifts, typically below a few percent.

Citation

Falck, B., McCullagh, N., Neyrinck, M., Wang, J., & Szalay, A. (2017). The Effect of Corner Modes in the Initial Conditions of Cosmological Simulations. Astrophysical Journal, 837(2), Article 181. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa60c7

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 13, 2017
Online Publication Date Mar 16, 2017
Publication Date Mar 16, 2017
Deposit Date Jul 11, 2017
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Astrophysical Journal
Print ISSN 0004-637X
Electronic ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher American Astronomical Society
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 837
Issue 2
Article Number 181
DOI https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa60c7

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Copyright Statement
© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.





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