The impact of Early Dark Energy on non-linear structure formation

Understand

We study non-linear structure formation in high-resolution simulations of Early Dark Energy (EDE) cosmologies and compare their evolution with the standard LCDM model.

• Extensions of the spherical top-hat collapse model predict that the virial overdensity and linear threshold density for collapse should be modified in EDE model, yielding significant modifications in the expected halo mass function.
• Here we present numerical simulations that directly test these expectations.
• Interestingly, we find that the Sheth & Tormen formalism for estimating the abundance of dark matter halos continues to work very well in its standard form for the Early Dark Energy cosmologies, contrary to analytic predictions.