On the statistical theory of self-gravitating collisionless dark matter flow

TL;DR

This paper develops a statistical theory for collisionless, self-gravitating dark matter flow, deriving analytical models for velocity, density, and potential correlations across different scales, and compares them with N-body simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive statistical framework for dark matter flow, incorporating scale-dependent behaviors and kinematic relations, which advances understanding beyond previous models.

Findings

Velocity correlation approaches 1/2 at small scales

Transverse velocity correlation decays exponentially with scale

Small-scale longitudinal structure function follows a 1/4 power law

Abstract

Dark matter, if exists, accounts for five times as much as the ordinary baryonic matter. Compared to hydrodynamic turbulence, the flow of dark matter might possess the widest presence in our universe. This paper presents a statistical theory for the flow of dark matter that is compared with N-body simulations. By contrast to hydrodynamics of normal fluids, dark matter flow is self-gravitating, long-range, and collisionless with a scale dependent flow behavior. The peculiar velocity field is of constant divergence nature on small scale and irrotational on large scale. The statistical measures, i.e. correlation, structure, dispersion, and spectrum functions are modeled on both small and large scales, respectively. Kinematic relations between statistical measures are fully developed for incompressible, constant divergence, and irrotational flow. Incompressible and constant divergence flow share same kinematic relations for even order correlations. The limiting correlation of velocity $\rho_L=1/2$ on the smallest scale ($r=0$) is a unique feature of collisionless flow ($\rho_L=1$ for incompressible flow). On large scale, transverse velocity correlation has an exponential form $T_2\propto e^{-r/r_2}$ with a constant comoving scale $r_2$=21.3Mpc/h that maybe related to the horizon size at matter-radiation equality. All other correlation, structure, dispersion, and spectrum functions for velocity, density, and potential fields are derived analytically from kinematic relations for irrotational flow. On small scale, longitudinal structure function follows one-fourth law of $S^l_2\propto r^{1/4}$. All other statistical measures can be obtained from kinematic relations for constant divergence flow. Vorticity is negatively correlated for scale $r$ between 1 and 7Mpc/h. Divergence is negatively correlated for $r$>30Mpc/h that leads to a negative density correlation.