English

Halo clustering and g_{NL}-type primordial non-Gaussianity

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2012-03-27 v1

Abstract

A wide range of multifield inflationary models generate non-Gaussian initial conditions in which the initial adiabatic fluctuation is of the form (zeta_G + g_{NL} zeta_G^3). We study halo clustering in these models using two different analytic methods: the peak-background split framework, and brute force calculation in a barrier crossing model, obtaining agreement between the two. We find a simple, theoretically motivated expression for halo bias which agrees with N-body simulations and can be used to constrain g_{NL} from observations. We discuss practical caveats to constraining g_{NL} using only observable properties of a tracer population, and argue that constraints obtained from populations whose observed bias is <~ 2.5 are generally not robust to uncertainties in modeling the halo occupation distribution of the population.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1106.0503,
  title  = {Halo clustering and g_{NL}-type primordial non-Gaussianity},
  author = {Kendrick M. Smith and Simone Ferraro and Marilena LoVerde},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1106.0503},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

24 pages, 3 figures