# Consistency relations for the Lagrangian halo bias and their implications

## TL;DR

This paper develops a method using consistency relations among halo bias factors to infer physical properties of protohalos, improving understanding of halo formation and bias modeling.

## Contribution

It introduces a framework leveraging consistency relations to connect bias measurements with protohalo physics, including assembly bias effects, with a focus on a two-parameter model.

## Key findings

- Effective two-parameter model accurately describes protohalo-matter cross-correlation.
- Consistency relations enable inference of enclosed density and slope from large-scale bias.
- Model predictions agree well with direct small-scale measurements.

## Abstract

The protohalo patches from which halos form are defined by a number of constraints imposed on the Lagrangian dark matter density field. Each of these constraints contributes to biasing the spatial distribution of the protohalos relative to the matter. We show how measurements of this spatial distribution -- linear combinations of protohalo bias factors -- can be used to make inferences about the physics of halo formation. Our analysis exploits the fact that halo bias factors satisfy consistency relations which encode this physics, and that these relations are the same even for sub-populations in which assembly bias has played a role. We illustrate our methods using a model in which three parameters matter: a density threshold, the local slope and the curvature of the smoothed density field. The latter two are nearly degenerate; our approach naturally allows one to build an accurate effective two-parameter model for which the consistency relations still apply. This, with an accurate description of the smoothing window, allows one to describe the protohalo-matter cross-correlation very well, both in Fourier and configuration space. We then use our determination of the large scale bias parameters together with the consistency relations, to estimate the enclosed density and mean slope on the Lagrangian radius scale of the protohalos. Direct measurements of these quantities, made on smaller scales than those on which the bias parameters are typically measured, are in good agreement.