3 per cent-accurate predictions for the clustering of dark matter, haloes, and subhaloes, over a wide range of cosmologies and scales

Abstract

ABSTRACT Predicting the spatial distribution of objects as a function of cosmology is an essential ingredient for the exploitation of future galaxy surveys. In this paper, we show that a specially designed suite of gravity-only simulations together with cosmology-rescaling algorithms can provide the clustering of dark matter, haloes, and subhaloes with high precision. Specifically, with only three N-body simulations, we obtain the power spectrum of dark matter at z = 0 and 1 to better than 3 per cent precision for essentially all currently viable values of eight cosmological parameters, including massive neutrinos and dynamical dark energy, and over the whole range of scales explored, 0.03 < $k/{h}^{-1}\, {\rm Mpc}^{-1}$ < 5. This precision holds at the same level for mass-selected haloes and for subhaloes selected according to their peak maximum circular velocity. As an initial application of these predictions, we successfully constrain Ωm, σ8, and the scatter in subhalo-abundance-matching employing the projected correlation function of mock SDSS galaxies.