Biasing and the distribution of dark matter haloes

Ravi K. Sheth, Gerard Lemson

Published 1998-08-13, updated 1999-01-11Version 2

In hierarchical models of gravitational clustering, virialized haloes are biased tracers of the matter distribution. As discussed by Mo & White (1996), this bias is nonlinear and stochastic. They developed a model which allows one to write down analytic expressions for the mean of the bias relation, in the initial Lagrangian, and the evolved, Eulerian spaces. We provide analytic expressions for the higher order moments as well. We also show how the Mo-White approach can be extended to compute the evolution, not just of the haloes, but of the dark matter distribution itself. The model predictions for the mean and scatter in the Eulerian bias relation, as well as for the Eulerian halo-mass and halo-halo correlation functions, are in reasonable agreement with numerical simulations of hierarchical gravitational clustering for haloes of a wide range of masses, whereas the predictions for the corresponding Lagrangian quantities are accurate only for massive haloes.