Non-linear gravitational clustering of cold matter in an expanding universe: indications from 1D toy models

TL;DR

This paper uses 1D toy models to explore non-linear gravitational clustering, revealing scale-invariant, virialized fractal structures that support the stable clustering hypothesis and challenge assumptions about dark matter halo profiles.

Contribution

It demonstrates that non-linear clustering in 1D models aligns with stable clustering predictions and suggests implications for 3D dark matter halo modeling.

Findings

Scale-invariant clustering exponents match stable clustering predictions.

Selected structures are statistically virialized across scales.

Results imply dark matter halos may be fractal and not smooth.

Abstract

Studies of a class of infinite one dimensional self-gravitating systems have highlighted that, on the one hand, the spatial clustering which develops may have scale invariant (fractal) properties, and, on the other, that they display "self-similar" properties in their temporal evolution. The relevance of these results to three dimensional cosmological simulations has remained unclear. We show here that the measured exponents characterizing the scale-invariant non-linear clustering are in excellent agreement with those derived from an appropriately generalized "stable-clustering" hypothesis. Further an analysis in terms of "halos" selected with a friend-of-friend algorithm reveals that such structures are, statistically, virialized across the range of scales corresponding to scale-invariance. Thus the strongly non-linear clustering in these models is accurately described as a virialized fractal structure, very much in line with the "clustering hierarchy" which Peebles originally envisaged qualitatively as associated with stable clustering. If transposed to three dimensions these results would imply, notably, that cold dark matter halos (or even subhalos) are 1) not well modeled as smooth objects, and 2) that the supposed "universality" of their profiles is, like apparent smoothness, an artefact of poor numerical resolution.