Hydrodynamical simulations of coupled and uncoupled quintessence models-I. Halo properties and the cosmic web

Abstract

We present the results of a series of adiabatic hydrodynamical simulations of several quintessence models (both with a free and an interacting scalar field) in comparison to a standard Λcold dark matter cosmology. For each we use 2 × 10243 particles in a 250 h-1 Mpc periodic box assuming 7-yearWilkinsonMicrowave Anisotropy Probe cosmology. In this work we focus on the properties of haloes in the cosmic web at z = 0. The web is classified into voids, sheets, filaments and knots depending on the eigenvalues of the velocity shear tensor, which are an excellent proxy for the underlying overdensity distribution. We find that the properties of objects classified according to their surrounding environment show a substantial dependence on the underlying cosmology; for example, while Vmax shows average deviations of ≈5 per cent across the different models when considering the full halo sample, comparing objects classified according to their environment, the size of the deviation can be as large as 20 per cent. We also find that halo spin parameters are positively correlated to the coupling, whereas halo concentrations show the opposite behaviour. Furthermore, when studying the concentration-mass relation in different environments, we find that in all cosmologies underdense regions have a larger normalization and a shallower slope. While this behaviour is found to characterize all the models, differences in the best-fitting relations are enhanced in (coupled) dark energy models, thus providing a clearer prediction for this class of models. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.