HALOGEN: A tool for fast generation of mock halo catalogues

Abstract

We present a simple method of generating approximate synthetic halo catalogues: HALOGEN. This method uses a combination of second-order Lagrangian Perturbation Theory (2LPT) in order to generate the large-scale matter distribution, analytical mass functions to generate halo masses, and a single-parameter stochastic model for halo bias to position haloes. HALOGEN represents a simplification of similar recently published methods. Our method is constrained to recover the two-point function at intermediate (10 h-1 Mpc