A parameter-free statistical measurement of halos with power spectra

We show that, in the halo model of large-scale structure formation, the difference between the Fourier and the DWT (discrete wavelet transform) power spectra provides a statistical measurement of the halos. This statistical quantity is free from parameters related to the shape of the mass profile and the identification scheme of halos. That is, the statistical measurement is invariant in the sense that models with reasonably defined and selected parameters of the halo models should yield the same difference of the Fourier and DWT spectra. This feature is useful to extract ensemble averaged properties of halos, which cannot be obtained with the identification of individual halo. To demonstrate this point, we show with WIGEON hydrodynamical simulation samples that the spectrum difference provides a quantitative measurement of the discrepancy of the distribution of baryonic gas from that of the underlying dark matter field within halos. We also show that the mass density profile of halos in physical space can be reconstructed with this statistical measurement. This profile essentially is the average over an ensemble of halos, including well virialized halos as well as halos with significant internal substructures. Moreover, this reconstruction is sensitive to the tail of the mass density profile. We showed that the profile with 1/r tail gives very different result from that of 1/r. Other possible applications of this method are discussed as well. Subject headings: cosmology: theory large-scale structure of the universe National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Science, Chao-Yang District, Beijing, 100012, P.R. China Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 Purple Mountain Observatory, Nanjing 210008, P.R. China