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The halo mass function from excursion set theory with a non-Gaussian trispectrum

Maggiore, Michele ; Riotto, Antonio

In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2010, vol. 405, no. 2, p. 1244-1252

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    Title
    • The halo mass function from excursion set theory with a non-Gaussian trispectrum
    Author
    • Maggiore, Michele. Département de Physique Théorique, Université de Genève, 24 quai Ansermet, CH-1211 Genève, Switzerland
    • Riotto, Antonio. CERN, PH-TH Division, CH-1211 Genève 23, Switzerland
    Document Type
    • Postprint
    OAI-PMH Identifier
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:304629
    Summary
    A sizeable level of non-Gaussianity in the primordial cosmological perturbations may be induced by a large trispectrum, i.e. by a large connected four-point correlation function. We compute the effect of a primordial non-Gaussian trispectrum on the halo mass function, within excursion set theory. We use the formalism that we have developed in a previous series of papers and which allows us to take into account the fact that, in the presence of non-Gaussianity, the stochastic evolution of the smoothed density field, as a function of the smoothing scale, is non-Markovian. In the large mass limit, the leading-order term that we find agrees with the leading-order term of the results found in the literature using a more heuristic Press-Schechter (PS)-type approach. Our approach however also allows us to evaluate consistently the subleading terms, which depend not only on the four-point cumulant but also on derivatives of the four-point correlator, and which cannot be obtained within non-Gaussian extensions of PS theory. We perform explicitly the computation up to next-to-leading order