# Accurate determination of the Lagrangian bias for the dark matter halos

## 1 Introduction

Galaxies and clusters of galaxies are believed to form within the potential wells of virialized dark matter (DM) halos. Understanding the clustering of DM halos can provide important clues to understanding the large scale structures in the Universe. A number of studies have therefore been carried out to obtain the two-point correlation function $`\xi _{hh}`$ of DM halos. Two distinctive approaches are widely adopted. One is analytical and is based on the Press-Schechter (PS) theories (e.g. Kashlinsky k87 (1987), k91 (1991); Cole & Kaiser ck89 (1989); Mann, Heavens, & Peacock mhp93 (1993); Mo & White mw96 (1996), hereafter MW96; Catelan et al. 1998a ; Porciani et al. pmlc98 (1998)). The other is numerical and is based on N-body simulations (e.g. White et al. wfde87 (1987); Bahcall & Cen bc92 (1992); Jing et al. jmbf93 (1993); Watanabe, Matsubara, & Suto wms94 (1994); Gelb & Bertschinger gb94 (1994); Jing, Börner, & Valdarnini jbv95 (1995); MW96; Mo, Jing, & White mjw96 (1996); Jing j98 (1998); Ma m98 (1999)). The up to date version of the analytical studies is given by MW96, which states that $`\xi _{hh}(r,M)`$ of halos with a mass $`M`$ is proportional to the DM correlation function $`\xi _{mm}(r)`$ on the linear clustering scale ($`\xi _{mm}(r)1`$), i.e. $`\xi _{hh}(r,M)=b^2(M)\xi _{mm}(r)`$, with the bias factor

$$b_{mw}(M)=1+\frac{\nu ^21}{\delta _c},$$
(1)   
where $`\delta _c=1.68`$, $`\nu \delta _c/\sigma (M)`$, and $`\sigma (M)`$ is the linearly evolved rms density fluctuation of top-hat spheres containing on average a mass $`M`$ (see MW96 and references therein for more details about these quantities). The subscript $`mw`$ for $`b(M)`$ in Eq.(1) denotes the result is analytically derived by MW96. On the other hand, the most accurate simulation result was recently presented by our recent work (Jing j98 (1998)), where we studied $`\xi _{hh}`$ for halos in four scale-free models and three CDM models with the help of a large set of high-resolution N-body simulations of $`256^3`$ particles. Our result unambiguously showed that while the bias is linear on the linear clustering scale, the bias factor given by MW96 significantly underestimates the clustering for small halos with $`\nu <1`$. Our simulation results both for the CDM models and the scale-free models can be accurately fitted by

$$b_{fit}(M)=(\frac{0.5}{\nu ^4}+1)^{(0.060.02n)}(1+\frac{\nu ^21}{\delta _c}),$$
(2)   
where $`n`$ is the index of the linear power spectrum $`P_m(k)`$ at the halo mass $`M`$

$$n=\frac{d\mathrm{ln}P_m(k)}{d\mathrm{ln}k}|_{k=\frac{2\pi }{R}};R=\left(\frac{3M}{4\pi \overline{\rho }}\right)^{1/3}.$$
(3)   
In the above equation $`\overline{\rho }`$ is the mean density of the universe.

MW96 derived their formula in two steps. First they obtained the bias factor $`b_{mw}^L(M)`$ in the Lagrangian space using the PS theories. The Lagrangian bias reads,

$$b_{mw}^L(M)=\frac{\nu ^21}{\delta _c}.$$
(4)   
But the bias that is observable is in the Eulerian space. MW96 obtained the Eulerian bias (Eq.1) with a linear mapping from the Lagrangian clustering pattern, $`b_{mw}(M)=b_{mw}^L(M)+1`$ (cf. Catelan et al. 1998a ). From their derivation, we conjectured in Jing (j98 (1998)) that two possibilities could have failed the MW96 formula for small halos. The first possibility is that the PS theories are not adequate for describing the formation of small halos. The halo formation in the PS theories is uniquely determined by the local peak height through the spherical collapse model, while in reality, especially the formation of small halos, can be significantly influenced by the non-local tidal force (e.g. Katz, Quinn, & Gelb kqg93 (1993); Katz et al. kqbg94 (1994)). A recent analysis by Sheth & Lemson (sl98 (1998)) for simulations of $`100^3`$ particles also gave some evidence that the Lagrangian bias of small halos has already deviated from the MW96 prediction (Eq.4). Possible invalidity of the linear mapping, the second possibility that fails the MW96 formula, was recently discussed by Catelan et al. (1998b ). They pointed out that the linear mapping might not be valid for small halos because of large scale non-linear tidal force. All these evidences are important but very preliminary and qualitative. It would be important to find out if one or a combination of the two possibilities can quantitatively explain the failure of the MW96 formula.

In this Letter, we report our new determination for the Lagrangian bias factor $`b^L(M)`$ using the simulations of Jing (j98 (1998)). We use a novel method, which we call the cross-power spectrum between the linear density field and the halo number density field, to measure the bias factor. The method has several important advantages over the conventional correlation function (CF) estimator. Applying this method to our high-resolution simulations yields a very accurate determination of $`b^L(M)`$ for halo mass over four magnitudes both in scale-free models and in CDM models. Our result of $`b^L(M)`$ can be accurately represented by $`b_{fit}(M)1`$, which quantitatively indicates that it is the failure of the PS theories for describing the formation of small halos that results in the failure of the MW96 formula. This result has important implications for the PS theories.

An independent, highly related work by Porciani et al. (pcl98 (1999)) appeared when the present work had been nearly finished. They measured the Lagrangian bias for two scale-free simulations ($`n=1`$ and $`n=2`$) of $`128^3`$ particles by fitting the halo two-point correlation function with the linear and second-order terms (corresponding to the coefficients $`b_1^L`$ and $`b_2^L`$ in Eq. 5). They concluded that the failure of the MW96 formula essentially exists in the Lagrangian space and that their result can be reasonably described by $`b_{fit}(M)1`$. While our present study ($`n=1`$ and $`n=2`$) confirms their result in these aspects, our simulations have significantly higher resolution (a factor 8 in mass) that is essential for a robust accurate measurement of clustering for small halos. Moreover, we explore a much larger model space and use a superior measurement method. In addition, there is some quantitative difference between their measured bias and ours which will be discussed in Sect. 3.

We will describe and discuss the cross-power spectrum method in Sect. 2, where we will also briefly describe our halo catalogs. Our measurement results will be presented and compared, in Sect. 3, to the analytical formula Eq.(4) and the fitting formula Eq.(2) for the Eulerian bias. In Sect. 4, we will summarize our results and discuss their implications for the PS theories and for galaxy formation.

## 2 Methods and simulation samples

We use the fluctuation field $`\delta (𝐫)=\rho (𝐫)/\overline{\rho }1`$ to denote the density field $`\rho (𝐫)`$, where $`\overline{\rho }`$ is the mean density. Smoothing both the halo number density field and the linear density field over scales much larger than the halo Lagrangian size, we assume that the smoothed halo field of $`\delta _h(𝐫)`$ can be expanded in the smoothed linear density field $`\delta _m(𝐫)`$ (Mo et al. mjw97 (1997)),

$$\delta _h(𝐫)=b_1^L\delta _m(𝐫)+\frac{1}{2}b_2^L\delta _m^2(𝐫)+\mathrm{}.$$
(5)   
This general assumption, especially to the first order, has been verified by previous simulation analysis (e.g. MW96; Mo, Jing, & White mjw97 (1997); Jing j98 (1998)). This expansion is however naturally expected in the PS theories, with the first coefficient $`b_1^Lb^L`$ given by Eq.(4) and the higher order coefficients by MW96, Mo et al. (mjw97 (1997)), and Catelan et al. (1998a ).

By Fourier transforming Eq.(5), multiplying the both sides by $`\delta _m^{}(𝐤)`$, and taking an ensemble average, we get the cross-power spectrum $`P_c(𝐤)\delta _h(𝐤)\delta _m^{}(𝐤)`$. Because the bispectrum of the linear density field vanishes for Gaussian fluctuations, the second term at the right hand side is zero. Therefore we have

$$P_c(k)=b^LP_m(k)+(3\mathrm{r}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{and}\mathrm{higher}\mathrm{order}\mathrm{terms}),$$
(6)   
where $`P_m(k)`$ is the linear power spectrum. This equation serves as a base for our measuring $`b^L`$. The linear density field $`\delta _m(𝐤)`$ is known when we set the initial condition for the simulations. The halo density field $`\delta _h(𝐤)`$ can be easily measured for a sample of the DM halos with the FFT method. The ensemble average in Eq.(6) can be replaced in measurement by the average over different modes within a fixed range of the wavenumber $`k`$. Thus both $`P_c(k)`$ and $`P_m(k)`$ can be easily measured. The bias factor $`b^L`$ is just the ratio of these two quantities, if higher order corrections are small and can be neglected.

This method has several important advantages over the conventional CF analysis. On the linear scale where the clustering of small halos is weak (about 10% of the mass correlation), the cross-power spectrum can be estimated accurately, because it does not suffer from the finite volume effect or the uncertainty of the mean halo number density. The errors of $`P_c(k)`$ and $`P_m(k)`$ are uncorrelated among different $`k`$-bins for a Gaussian field, which ease our error estimate for $`b^L`$. The second order correction ($`b_2^L`$-term) vanishes in the cross-power spectrum. The method yields a determination of $`b_1^L`$, not the square of $`b^L`$, thus we can see if the bias factor $`b_1^L`$ is positive for $`M/M_{}>1`$ and negative for $`M/M_{}<1`$ as Eq.(4) predicts, where $`M_{}`$ is the characteristic mass defined by $`\sigma (M_{})=\delta _c`$. All these attractive features do not present in the CF analysis. An additional interesting feature is that the shot noise of the finite number of halos is greatly suppressed in the estimate of $`P_c(k)`$, because the linear density field dose not contain any shot noise and the cross-power spectrum of this field with the shot noise (of a random sample) is zero in the mean. It is quite different from the (self) power spectrum estimate of the halos which we must correct for the shot noise $`1/N`$ ($`N`$ is the number of halos). In the next section, we will quantitatively show the shot noise effect is indeed negligible in our measurement of $`b^L`$ even for a sample containing as many as $`100`$ halos.

The halo catalogs analyzed here are the same as those used in Jing (j98 (1998)). The cosmological models, the simulations, and the halo catalogs were described in detail by Jing (j98 (1998)). Here we only briefly summarize the features that are relevant to the present work. The catalogs were selected, with the friends-of-friends algorithm with the linking length 0.2 times the mean particle separation, from a set of $`\mathrm{P}^3\mathrm{M}`$ N-body simulations of $`256^3`$ particles. The simulations cover four scale-free models $`P_m(k)k^n`$ with $`n=0.5`$, $`1.0`$, $`1.5`$ and $`2.0`$ and three typical cold dark matter (CDM) models which are SCDM, LCDM and OCDM models respectively. Each of the $`n1.5`$ scale-free simulations has seven outputs, and that of the $`n=2`$ has eight outputs. The CDM models are simulated with two different box sizes, $`100`$ and $`300h^1\mathrm{Mpc}`$. Three to four realizations were run for each model and for each box size in the case of the CDM models. In order to study the halo distribution in the Lagrangian space, we trace back each of the halo members to its initial position before the Zel’dovich displacement, i.e. the position in the Lagrangian space. The position of a halo is defined as the center of the mass of its members in the Lagrangian space. In this way our halo catalogs in the Lagrangian space are compiled.

## 3 The Lagrangian bias parameter

We present our results for the linear clustering scales where the variance $`\mathrm{\Delta }^2(k)k^3P_m(k)/2\pi ^2`$ is less than $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{max}^2`$. In this paper, we take $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{max}^2=0.5`$, but our results change little if we take $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{max}^2=0.25`$ or $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{max}^2=1.0`$. Figure 1 shows the ratio of the cross-power spectrum $`P_c(k)`$ to the linear power spectrum $`P_m(k)`$ as a function $`k`$ for two halo masses in the $`n=0.5`$ scale-free model. The ratios, i.e. the bias factors, do not depend on the scale $`k`$, so the linear bias approximation is valid. The bias factor is positive for the large halos of $`M=13M_{}`$, but negative for the small halos of $`M=0.16M_{}`$, consistent with the MW96 prediction Eq.(4). Here we only show two examples, but the above features are found in all the models.

To quantitatively examine the shot noise effect caused by the finite number of the halos (§2), we repeat our calculation for random samples. For each halo sample, we generate ten random samples. The mean bias factor calculated for the random samples is zero, as expected. More interesting is that the fluctuation of the bias factor between the random samples is always small compared to the halo bias factor. This is shown in Figure 1, where the dashed lines are the $`1\sigma `$ upper limits of the shot noise. The catalog of $`M=13M_{}`$ contains only $`200`$ halos in each realization. Even in this case, the shot noise leads to an uncertainty of only $`10\%`$ of the halo bias at every $`k`$bin (except for the first bin). The shot noise is indeed effectively suppressed in our cross-power spectrum measurement.

From Figure 1, we know that the Lagrangian bias $`b^L`$, on the linear clustering scale, is a function of the halo mass $`M`$ only. The self-similar nature of the scale-free models makes the bias depend only on $`M/M_{}`$. Three panels of Figure 2 show our result of $`b_1^L(M/M_{})`$ for the models $`n=0.5`$, $`1.0`$ and $`2.0`$ at different output times. We do not plot, for the limited space, our result for the $`n=1.5`$ model, but all of our following discussion still includes this model. The excellent scaling exhibited by $`b^L(M/M_{})`$ at different outputs supports that our measurement is not contaminated by any numerical artifacts. The bias factor is negative for $`M<M_{}`$, zero for $`M=M_{}`$, and positive for $`M>M_{}`$, in agreement with the MW96 formula. More quantitatively, the MW96 formula describes very well the Lagrangian clustering for large halos $`M>M_{}`$, but systematically underestimates (more negative bias) for small halos $`M<M_{}`$. If the linear mapping is valid, i.e. $`b=b^L+1`$, these results are fully consistent with our previous finding (Jing j98 (1998)) that the MW96 formula systematically underestimates the Eulerian bias for small halos. More interestingly, with the linear mapping assumption and with our fitting formula Eq.(2) for the Eulerian bias, we can get a Lagrangian bias $`b_{fit}^Lb_{fit}1`$ that agrees very well with our simulation results (the solid lines on Fig. 2). So the inaccuracy of the MW96 Eulerian bias formula Eq. (1) already exists in their derivation for the Lagrangian bias. Our results for the $`n=1`$ and $`n=2`$ models are qualitatively in good agreement with Porciani et al. (pcl98 (1999)). Quantitatively, we note that their Lagrangian bias is significantly lower than the MW96 formula for $`M>M_{}`$ in the $`n=1`$ model, in contrast to the good agreement we find with the MW96 formula for all models for $`M>M_{}`$.

Our result for the LCDM model is shown in the lower-right panel of Figure 2. Comparing to the MW96 analytical formula Eq(1) and the fitting formula Eq(2), we have the same conclusion as we got for the scale-free models: the analytical formula underestimates the Lagrangian bias value for small halos and the fitting formula agrees quite well with the simulation results after the difference between the Eulerian and the Lagrangian spaces is considered with the linear mapping. The SCDM and OCDM models give essentially the same results, and we omit their plots.

Our fitting formula for the Eulerian bias can accurately describe the Lagrangian bias under the assumption of the linear mapping. The difference between the fitting formula and the simulation result is generally less than $`15\%`$ or $`2\sigma `$ ($`\sigma `$ is the error derived from the different realizations) except for one bin of the smallest halos in the $`n=0.5`$ model. The simulation result is slightly higher in the $`n=0.5`$ model but lower in the $`n=2.0`$ model (both about 15%) than the fitting formula for small halos ($`MM_{}`$). The difference could come from the possible effect of non-linear mapping (Catelen et al. 1998b ) and/or from higher order contributions which depend on measurement methods (for the Eulerian bias we used the CF analysis). We will address this problem more closely in a future paper.

## 4 Discussion and conclusions

In this Letter, we use a new method, the cross-power spectrum between the linear density field and the halo number density field, to determine the Lagrangian bias. The method has several apparent advantages over the conventional correlation function estimator in determining the bias factor. Applying this method to the halo catalogs of Jing (j98 (1998)), we find that the Lagrangian bias is linear on the linear clustering scale. The Lagrangian bias $`b^L(M)`$ is positive for halo mass $`M>M_{}`$, zero for $`M=M_{}`$, and negative for $`M<M_{}`$, qualitatively consistent with the MW96 prediction for the Lagrangian bias. Quantitatively, our simulation results of $`b^L(M)`$ are in good agreement with the MW96 formula for large halos $`M/M_{}>1`$, but the MW96 formula significantly underestimates the Lagrangian clustering for small halos $`M/M_{}<1`$. Our measured Lagrangian bias can be described very well by our fitting formula for the Eulerian bias Eq.(2) under the linear mapping assumption. Our results therefore unambiguously demonstrate that the inaccuracy of the MW96 formula for the Eulerian bias already exists in their derivation for the Lagrangian bias.

A very subtle point is that there exists a small difference ($`<15\%`$) between our measured Lagrangian bias and our fitting formula \[Eq.(2)\] for Eulerian bias after the linear mapping is applied. This difference could be due to the difference of the measurement methods or/and the non-linear mapping effect. Our result however assures that the non-linear effect in the mapping, if any, must be small compared to the linear mapping.

The result of this paper has important implications for the Press-Schechter theories. The spherical collapse model that connects the halo formation with the density peaks has to be replaced with a model that can better describe the formation of small halos. This might be related to solving the long standing problem that the halo number density predicted by the Press-Schechter theories has a factor of a few difference from simulation results (e.g., Gelb & Bertschinger gb94 (1994); Lacey & Cole lc94 (1994); Ma & Bertschinger mb94 (1994); Jing 1998, unpublished; Tormen t98 (1998); Kauffmann et al. ketal98 (1998); Somerville et al. setal98 (1998); Governato et al. getal98 (1998); Lee & Shandarian ls98 (1998); Jing, Kitayama, & Suto jks99 (1999)). Because galaxies are believed to form within small halos ($`M<M_{}`$), solving these problems is of fundamental significance to studying galaxy formation.

It is also my pleasure to thank an anonymous referee for a constructive report and the JSPS foundation for a postdoctoral fellowship. The simulations were carried out on VPP/16R and VX/4R at the Astronomical Data Analysis Center of the National Astronomical Observatory, Japan.