# Measuring the growth of structure by matching dark matter haloes to galaxies with VIPERS and SDSS

## TL;DR

This study validates the subhalo abundance matching model at different redshifts and uses N-body simulations to infer the growth index of cosmic structure formation.

## Contribution

It demonstrates the effectiveness of SHAM in characterizing galaxy clustering at redshifts 0 and 1 and introduces a method to test alternative growth histories using simulations.

## Key findings

- SHAM accurately models galaxy clustering at z=0 and z=1.
- The inferred growth index is $oxed{ ext{0.6}\pm ext{0.3}}$.
- N-body simulations are powerful tools for cosmological inference.

## Abstract

We test the history of structure formation from redshift 1 to today by matching galaxies from VIPERS and SDSS with dark matter haloes in the MultiDark SMDPL N-body simulation. We first show that the standard subhalo abundance matching (SHAM) recipe implemented with MultiDark characterizes the clustering of galaxies well both at redshift 0 for SDSS and at redshift 1 for VIPERS. This is an important validation of the SHAM model at high redshift. We then remap the simulation timesteps to test alternative growth histories and infer the growth index $\gamma=0.6\pm0.3$. This analysis demonstrates the power of using N-body simulations to forward model galaxy surveys for cosmological inference.