GRAVITATIONAL PHASE TRANSITIONS IN THE COSMOLOGICAL MANY-BODY SYSTEM
- Astronomy Department, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904 (United States)
- Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 OHA (United Kingdom)
Gravitational many-body clustering of particles (e.g., galaxies) in an expanding universe may be regarded as a form of phase transition. We calculate its properties here and find that it differs in several ways from usual laboratory phase transitions. The cosmological case is never complete since it takes longer to evolve dynamically on larger spatial scales. To examine this, we calculate the effects of higher order corrections on the thermodynamic properties and distribution functions (which are known to agree with observations). The additional higher order terms are subdominant and decrease as the number of particles in the system increases. We also propose an order parameter for this hierarchical phase transition and discuss its relation to the Yang-Lee theory of phase transitions. These results also help to quantify earlier ideas of 'continuous clustering'.
- OSTI ID:
- 21460044
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 720, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/720/2/1246; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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