Signatures of a Parity-Violating Universe

Abstract

What would a parity-violating universe look like? We present a numerical and theoretical study of mirror asymmetries in the late universe, using a new suite of $N$-body simulations: QUIJOTE-Odd. These feature parity-violating initial conditions, injected via a simple ansatz for the imaginary primordial trispectrum and evolved into the non-linear regime. We find that the realization-averaged power spectrum, bispectrum, halo mass function, and matter PDF are not affected by our modifications to the initial conditions, deep into the non-linear regime, which we argue arises from rotational and translational invariance. In contrast, the parity-odd trispectrum of matter (measured using a new estimator), shows distinct signatures proportional to the parity-violating parameter, $p_{\mathrm{NL}}$, which sets the amplitude of the primordial trispectrum. We additionally find intriguing signatures in the angular momentum of halos, with the primordial trispectrum inducing a non-zero correlation between angular momentum and smoothed velocity field, proportional to $p_{\mathrm{NL}}$. Our simulation suite has been made public to facilitate future analyses.

Comments: 19 pages, 9 figures. Simulations available at https://quijote-simulations.readthedocs.io/en/latest/odd.html