Hellwing, WA, Schaller, M, Frenk, CS, Theuns, T, Schaye, J, Bower, RG and Crain, RA (2016) The effect of baryons on redshift space distortions and cosmic density and velocity fields in the EAGLE simulation. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 461 (1). L11-L15. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

We use the EAGLE galaxy formation simulation to study the effects of baryons on the power spectrum of the total matter and dark matter distributions and on the velocity fields of dark matter and galaxies. On scales $k{\stackrel{>}{{}_\sim}} 4{h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}}$ the effect of baryons on the amplitude of the total matter power spectrum is greater than $1\%$. The back-reaction of baryons affects the density field of the dark matter at the level of $\sim3\%$ on scales of $1\leq k/({h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}})\leq 5$. The dark matter velocity divergence power spectrum at $k{\stackrel{<}{{}_\sim}}0.5{h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}}$ is changed by less than $1\%$. The 2D redshift-space power spectrum is affected at the level of $\sim6\%$ at $|\vec{k}|{\stackrel{>}{{}_\sim}} 1{h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}}$ (for $\mu>0.5$), but for $|\vec{k}|\leq 0.4{h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}}$ it differs by less than $1\%$. We report vanishingly small baryonic velocity bias for haloes: the peculiar velocities of haloes with $M_{200}>3\times10^{11}{{\rm M}_{\odot}}$ (hosting galaxies with $M_{*}>10^9{{\rm M}_{\odot}}$) are affected at the level of at most $1~$km/s, which is negligible for $1\%$-precision cosmology. We caution that since EAGLE overestimates cluster gas fractions it may also underestimate the impact of baryons, particularly for the total matter power spectrum. Nevertheless, our findings suggest that for theoretical modelling of redshift space distortions and galaxy velocity-based statistics, baryons and their back-reaction can be safely ignored at the current level of observational accuracy. However, we confirm that the modelling of the total matter power spectrum in weak lensing studies needs to include realistic galaxy formation physics in order to achieve the accuracy required in the precision cosmology era.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0201 Astronomical And Space Sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Related URLs:	http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03328v2
Date Deposited:	13 Jul 2016 08:43
Last Modified:	04 Sep 2021 12:43
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnrasl/slw081
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/3881

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