The BAHAMAS project: effects of dynamical dark energy on large-scale structure

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this work, we consider the impact of spatially uniform but time-varying dark energy (or ‘dynamical dark energy’, DDE) on large-scale structure in a spatially flat universe, using large cosmological hydrodynamical simulations that form part of the BAHAMAS project. As DDE changes the expansion history of the universe, it impacts the growth of structure. We explore variations in DDE that are constrained to be consistent with the cosmic microwave background. We find that DDE can affect the clustering of matter and haloes at the $\sim 10{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ level (suppressing it for so-called freezing models, while enhancing it for thawing models), which should be distinguishable with upcoming large-scale structure surveys. DDE cosmologies can also enhance or suppress the halo mass function (with respect to Lambda cold dark matter) over a wide range of halo masses. The internal properties of haloes are minimally affected by changes in DDE, however. Finally, we show that the impact of baryons and associated feedback processes is largely independent of the change in cosmology and that these processes can be modelled separately to typically better than a few per cent accuracy.