Testing Lambda CDM cosmology at turnaround: where to look for violations of the bound?

TL;DR

This paper investigates the maximum size of cosmic structures in Lambda CDM cosmology, identifying the optimal mass scale for testing potential violations of the theoretical turnaround radius bound.

Contribution

It determines the critical mass scale (~10^{13} M_sun) for structures near the turnaround bound and explains their formation and evolution in the context of Lambda CDM.

Findings

Turnaround structures have mostly stopped forming today.

The transitional mass scale is around 10^{13} M_sun.

Different accretion behaviors are explained by the mass scale.

Abstract

In $\Lambda$CDM cosmology, structure formation is halted shortly after dark energy dominates the mass/energy budget of the Universe. A manifestation of this effect is that in such a cosmology the turnaround radius has an upper bound. Recently, a new, local, test for the existence of dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant was proposed based on this turnaround bound. Before designing an experiment that, through high-precision determination of masses and turnaround radii, will challenge $\Lambda$CDM cosmology, we have to answer two important questions: first, when turnaround-scale structures are predicted to be close enough to their maximum size, so that a possible violation of the bound may be observable. Second, which is the best mass scale to target for possible violations of the bound. Using the Press-Schechter formalism, we find that turnaround structures have in practice already stopped forming, and consequently, the turnaround radius of structures must be very close to the maximum value today. We also find that the mass scale of $\sim 10^{13} M_\odot$ characterizes turnaround structures that start to form in a statistically important number density today. This mass scale also separates turnaround structures with different cosmological evolution: smaller structures are no longer readjusting their mass distribution inside the turnaround scale, they asymptotically approach their ultimate abundance from higher values, and they are common enough to have, at some epoch, experienced major mergers with structures of comparable mass; larger structures exhibit the opposite behavior. We call this mass scale the transitional mass scale and we argue that it is the optimal for the purpose outlined above. As a corollary result, we explain the different accretion behavior of small and larger structures observed in already conducted numerical simulations.