The contributions of matter inside and outside of haloes to the matter power spectrum

Abstract

Halo-based models have been successful in predicting the clustering of matter. However, the validity of the postulate that the clustering is fully determined by matter inside haloes remains largely untested, and it is not clear a priori whether non-virialised matter might contribute significantly to the non-linear clustering signal. Here, we investigate the contribution of haloes to the matter power spectrum as a function of both scale and halo mass by combining a set of cosmological N-body simulations to calculate the contributions of different spherical overdensity regions, Friends-of-Friends (FoF) groups and matter outside haloes to the power spectrum. We find that matter inside spherical overdensity regions of size R200,mean cannot account for all power for 1 20 h/Mpc). For 2 10^9 Msun/h accounts for essentially all power for 3 1 h/Mpc).