Spinning masters: on the impact of tidal forces and protohalo size on early spin evolution

TL;DR

This study investigates how tidal forces and protohalo size influence the early spin evolution of dark matter halos, revealing that tidal interactions on scales related to protohalo size cause early discrepancies with traditional tidal torque theory predictions.

Contribution

It identifies the characteristic scale of tidal perturbations affecting protohalos and explains early deviations from tidal torque theory using simulation analysis.

Findings

Tidal fields couple with protohalo inertia tensors on scales about half their size.

Discrepancies between theory and simulation appear as early as redshift 10-5.

Protohalo shape interactions with the cosmic web influence spin evolution.

Abstract

In this work, we explore how the size and surrounding tidal fields of dark matter protohalos at high redshift influence their angular momentum (AM) evolution. While tidal torque theory (TTT) states that AM arises from the misalignment between protohalo shape and tidal fields, it remains unclear what is the characteristic scale of the perturbations that couple with each protohalo, and its correlation with protohalo properties such as size. Moreover, although the assumptions of the TTT are assumed to hold during the linear and quasi-linear regime, cosmological simulations reveal that discrepancies between its predictions and the true AM of halos emerge earlier than expected. To address this, we analyze cosmological simulations to study tidal fields at z=80 using different smoothing lengths, and determine which best predicts AM under TTT. We then investigate discrepancies between predicted and actual AM across redshifts, considering the effect of evolving tidal and inertia tensors. Our results show that the early tidal field couples with the inertia tensor of protohalos on scales about half of their characteristic size and confirm that disagreements between theory and simulation emerge already at relatively early cosmic times (z~10-5), suggesting a systematic effect from protohalo shape interacting with the forming cosmic web.