Cosmological simulations of scale-dependent primordial non-Gaussianity

Abstract

We present the results of a set of cosmological N-body simulations with standard ΛCDM cosmology but characterized by a scale-dependent primordial non-Gaussianity of the local type featuring a power-law dependence of the f NL loc(k) at large scales followed by a saturation to a constant value at smaller scales where non-linear growth leads to the formation of collapsed cosmic structures. Such models are built to ensure consistency with current Cosmic Microwave Background bounds on primordial non-Gaussianity yet allowing for large effects of the non-Gaussian statistics on the properties of non-linear structure formation. We show the impact of such scale-dependent non-Gaussian scenarios on a wide range of properties of the resulting cosmic structures, such as the non-linear matter power spectrum, the halo and sub-halo mass functions, the concentration-mass relation, the halo and void density profiles, and we highlight for the first time that some of these models might mimic the effects of Warm Dark Matter for several of such observables.