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A New Angle on Gravitational Clustering
Author(s) -
Scoccimarro Román
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2001.tb05618.x
Subject(s) - physics , propagator , nonlinear system , instability , classical mechanics , vorticity , feynman diagram , gravitational collapse , gravitation , statistical physics , perturbation (astronomy) , gravitational field , mathematical physics , vortex , quantum mechanics , mechanics
A bstract : A new approach to gravitational instability in large‐scale structure is described, where the equations of motion are written and solved as in field theory in terms of Feynman diagrams. The basic objects of interest are the propagator (which propagates solutions forward in time), the vertex (which describes nonlinear interactions between waves) and a source with prescribed statistics which describes the effect of initial conditions. We show that loop corrections renormalize these quantities, and discuss applications of this formalism to a better understanding of gravitational instability and to improving nonlinear perturbation theory in the transition to the nonlinear regime. We also consider the role of vorticity creation due to shell‐crossing and show using N‐body simulations for which at small (virialized) scales the velocity field reaches equipartition, that is, the vorticity power spectrum is about twice the divergence power spectrum.