Toward a Universal Formulation of the Halo Mass Function

Understand

We compute the dark matter halo mass function using the excursion set formalism for a diffusive barrier with linearly drifting average which captures the main features of the ellipsoidal collapse model.

• We evaluate the non-Markovian corrections due to the sharp filtering of the linear density field in real space with a path-integral method.
• We find an unprecedented agreement with N-body simulation data with deviations within ~5% level over the range of masses probed by the simulations.
• This indicates that the Excursion Set in combination with a realistic modelling of the collapse threshold can provide a robust estimation of the halo mass function.