Statistical Decoupling of Lagrangian Fluid Parcel in Newtonian Cosmology

TL;DR

This paper introduces a statistical method to decouple environmental effects in the Lagrangian dynamics of cosmic fluid elements, enabling simplified analysis of non-linear cosmic structure evolution.

Contribution

It develops a set of closed differential equations for the matter PDF evolution, averaging over environments and recovering Zel'dovich approximation under Gaussian assumptions.

Findings

Derives a probability distribution evolution equation for matter fields.

Provides a set of closed ODEs for local fluid parcel evolution.

Recovers Zel'dovich approximation for Gaussian fields.

Abstract

The Lagrangian dynamics of a single fluid element within a self-gravitational matter field is intrinsically non-local due to the presence of the tidal force. This complicates the theoretical investigation of the non-linear evolution of various cosmic objects, e.g. dark matter halos, in the context of Lagrangian fluid dynamics, since a fluid parcel with given initial density and shape may evolve differently depending on their environments. In this paper, we provide a statistical solution that could decouple this environmental dependence. After deriving the probability distribution evolution equation of the matter field, our method produces a set of closed ordinary differential equations whose solution is uniquely determined by the initial condition of the fluid element. Mathematically, it corresponds to the projected characteristic curve of the transport equation of the density-weighted probability density function (PDF). Consequently it is guaranteed that the one-point PDF would be preserved by evolving these local, yet non-linear, curves with the same set of initial data as the real system. Physically, these trajectories describe the mean evolution averaged over all environments by substituting the tidal tensor with its conditional average. For Gaussian distributed dynamical variables, this mean tidal tensor is simply proportional to the velocity shear tensor, and the dynamical system would recover the prediction of Zel'dovich approximation (ZA) with the further assumption of the linearized continuity equation. For Weakly non-Gaussian field, the averaged tidal tensor could be expanded perturbatively as a function of all relevant dynamical variables whose coefficients are determined by the statistics of the field.