Ellipsoidal collapse and an improved model for the number and spatial distribution of dark matter haloes

The Press--Schechter, excursion set approach allows one to make predictions about the shape and evolution of the mass function of bound objects. It combines the assumption that objects collapse spherically with the assumption that the initial density fluctuations were Gaussian and small. While the predicted mass function is reasonably accurate at the high mass end, it has more low mass objects than are seen in simulations of hierarchical clustering. This discrepancy can be reduced substantially if bound structures are assumed to form from an ellipsoidal, rather than a spherical collapse. In the spherical model, a region collapses if the initial density within it exceeds a threshold value, delta_sc. This value is independent of the initial size of the region, and since the mass of the collapsed object is related to its initial size, delta_sc is independent of final mass. In the ellipsoidal model, the collapse of a region depends on the surrounding shear field, as well as on its initial overdensity. Therefore, there is a relation between the density threshold value required for collapse, and the mass of the final object. We provide a fitting function to this delta_ec(m) relation for initially Gaussian fields which simplifies the inclusion of ellipsoidal dynamics in the excursion set approach. We discuss the relation between the excursion set predictions and the halo distribution in high resolution N-body simulations, and show that our simple parametrization of the ellipsoidal collapse model represents a significant improvement on the spherical model on an object-by-object basis. Finally, we show that the associated statistical predictions, the mass function and the large scale halo-to-mass bias relation, are also more accurate than the standard predictions.