On the Outskirts of Dark Matter Haloes

TL;DR

This paper develops a systematic, simulation-based method to define and analyze compensated halo profiles beyond virial radii, improving the physical accuracy of large-scale structure models.

Contribution

It extends the Amended Halo Model by introducing a universal, compensated halo profile applicable to large radii, validated through N-body simulations.

Findings

The compensated halo profile peaks near the virial radius.

Profiles become negative beyond 2-3 times the virial radius.

Preliminary fitting functions for compensated NFW profiles are provided.

Abstract

Halo Models of large scale structure provide powerful and indispensable tools for phenomenological understanding of the clustering of matter in the Universe. While the halo model builds structures out of the superposition of haloes, defining halo profiles in their outskirts - beyond their virial radii - becomes increasingly ambiguous, as one cannot assign matter to individual haloes in a clear way. In this paper, we tackle this question by using numerical N-body simulations to find a systematic definition of mean halo profile that can be extended to large radii. These profiles must be compensated and are the key ingredients for the computation of cosmological correlation functions in the Amended Halo Model. The latter, introduced in our earlier work (arXiv:1912.04872), provides a more physically accurate phenomenological description of nonlinear structure formation, which respects conservation laws on large scales. Here, we extend this model from the matter auto-power spectrum to the halo-matter cross-power spectra, using N-body simulations. We find that the (dimensionless) compensated halo profile, $r^3 \times \rho(r)/M_{200c}$ has a near-universal maximum in the small range $0.03-0.04$ around the virial radius, $r \simeq r_{\rm 200c}$, independent of the halo mass. The profiles cross zero into negative values in the halo outskirts, beyond 2-3$\times r_{\rm 200c}$, consistent with our previous results. We provide preliminary fitting functions for compensated Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profiles, and this can be used to compute more physical observables in the Amended Halo Model of large scale structure.