Statistical physics for cosmic structures

TL;DR

This paper reviews how statistical physics methods are applied to understand the formation and distribution of cosmic structures like galaxies and dark matter, addressing key observational and theoretical challenges.

Contribution

It discusses recent advances in applying statistical physics concepts to cosmological structure formation, highlighting new insights into clustering and matter distribution.

Findings

Insights into power-law correlations in galaxy clustering

Understanding the relation between dark and visible matter

Progress in modeling structure formation using statistical physics

Abstract

The recent observations of galaxy and dark matter clumpy distributions have provided new elements to the understating of the problem of cosmological structure formation. The strong clumpiness characterizing galaxy structures seems to be present in the overall mass distribution and its relation to the highly isotropic Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation represents a fundamental problem. The extension of structures, the formation of power-law correlations characterizing the strongly clustered regime and the relation between dark and visible matter are the key problems both from an observational and a theoretical point of view. We discuss recent progresses in the studies of structure formation by using concepts and methods of statistical physics.