Primordial Physics in the Nonlinear Universe: Revealing the oscillating halo bias from cosmological collider models

Abstract

The initial conditions of our Universe contain a wealth of information about the particle physics of very high energies. One such class of signatures, called cosmological colliders, generates oscillations in the three-point correlations (or bispectra) of the primordial density field, and these imprint scale-dependent oscillations in the halo bias. We develop a new method for simulating cosmological collider models that foregoes traditional template-based basis-decomposition methods and can reproduce the scale-dependent signals of the input template at percent-level accuracy. Using this method, we produce simulations for one class of collider models and present the first measurements of oscillating halo bias in simulations. The amplitude and phase of the oscillations show a clear dependence on halo mass, with a factor of ten shift in halo mass causing a factor of two shift in the location of the oscillations. Increasing the frequency of the primordial bispectra model suppresses the signal in the halo bias, as the oscillations average down over the window function of the halo. The phase of the signal is also sensitive to assembly bias. In all cases, the scale-dependent halo bias can be accurately modeled using a simple peak background-split theory. The oscillations and their mass/selection-dependent phase offsets are a unique signature that is not easily mimicked by known observational systematics and is therefore a more robust target. Our simulations and underlying initial conditions code are both made publicly available.