Simulating structure formation in different environments and the application

Abstract

The observables of the large-scale structure such as galaxy number density generally depends on the density environment (of a few hundred Mpc). The dependence can traditionally be studied by performing gigantic cosmological N-body simulations and measuring the observables in different density environments. Alternatively, we perform the so-called "separate universe simulations", in which the effect of the environment is absorbed into the change of the cosmological parameters. For example, an overdense region is equivalent to a universe with positive curvature, hence the structure formation changes accordingly compared to the region without overdensity. In this talk, I will introduce the "separate universe mapping", and present how the power spectrum
and halo mass function change in different density environments, which are equivalent to the squeezed bispectrum and the halo bias, respectively. I will then discuss the extension of this approach to inclusion of additional fluids such as massive neutrinos. This allows us to probe the novel scale-dependence of halo bias and squeezed bispectrum caused by different evolutions of the background overdensities of cold dark matter and the additional fluid. Finally, I will present one application of the separate universe simulations to predict the squeezed bispectrum formed by small-scale Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum and large-scale lensing convergence, and compare with the measurement from BOSS Lyman-alpha forest and Planck lensing map.