Clustering of dark matter halos on the light cone: Scale, time, and mass dependence of the halo biasing in the Hubble volume simulations

Abstract

We develop a phenomenological model to predict the clustering of dark matter halos on the light cone by combining several existing theoretical models. Assuming that the velocity field of halos on large scales is approximated by linear theory, we propose an empirical prescription of a scale, mass, and time dependence of halo biasing. We test our model against the Hubble volume N-body simulation and examine its validity and limitations. We find a good agreement in two-point correlation functions of dark matter halos between the phenomenological model predictions and measurements from the simulation for R > 5 h(-1) Mpc in both the real and redshift spaces. Although calibrated on the mass scale of groups and clusters and for redshifts of up to z similar to 2 the model is quite general and can be applied to a wider range of astrophysical objects, such as galaxies and quasars, if the relation between dark halos and visible objects is specified.