Presentation Archive

Large scale structure formation with the Schrodinger method

Cora Uhlemann (Arnold Sommerfeld Center)

October 17, 2014

Abstract: When describing large-scale structure formation of collisionless dark matter one is interested in the dynamics of a large collection of identical point particles that interact only gravitationally. Via gravitational instability initially small density perturbations evolve into eventually bound structures, like dark matter halos that are distributed along the cosmic web. Even though this problem seems quite simple from a conceptual point of view, no sufficiently general solution of the underlying equation, the collisionless Boltzmann equation coupled to the Poisson equation, is known. Therefore one usually has to resort to N-body simulations which tackle the problem numerically. Analytical methods to describe structure formation are in general based on the dust model which describes cold dark matter as a pressureless fluid characterized by density and velocity. This model works quite well up to the quasi-linear regime but eventually fails when multiple streams form that are especially important for halo formation but lead to singularities in the model. We employ the so-called Schrodinger method to develop a model which is able to describe multi-streaming and therefore can serve as theoretical N-body double and replacement for the dust model.