Can early dark energy be detected in non-linear structure?

We present the first study of early dark energy cosmologies using N-body simulations to investigate the formation of a non-linear structure. In contrast to expectations from semianalytic approaches, we find that early dark energy does not imprint a unique signature on the statistics of non-linear structures. Investigating the non-linear power spectra and halo mass functions, we show that universal mass functions hold for early dark energy, making its presence difficult to distinguish from Lambda cold dark matter. Since early dark energy biases the baryon acoustic oscillation scale, the lack of discriminating power is problematic.