An essential building block for cosmological zoom-in perturbation theory

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-scale hierarchical framework in General Relativity that predicts matter horizon formation before shell crossing, improving boundary condition implementation in cosmological zoom-in simulations.

Contribution

It develops a novel hierarchical approach to avoid shell-crossing singularities and enhances the robustness of boundary conditions in cosmological simulations.

Findings

Matter horizon forms before caustics in an expanding FLRW universe.

The framework relates to and potentially improves cosmological zoom-in N-body simulations.

Provides a method to cut and glue spacetimes to avoid singularities.

Abstract

The evolution of large-scale structure within the standard model of cosmology is well posed only up to the onset of shell crossing, where particle trajectories appear to intersect. Beyond this point, the evolution equations become non-predictive and perturbative approaches break down. We show that in General Relativity, a matter horizon forms before caustics develop for a well-defined initial over-density on an expanding FLRW spacetime. The matter horizon was first identified by Ellis and Stoeger in 2010 as a dynamical causal boundary that encloses a sub-region of spacetime where structure formation actually takes place. We construct a multi-scale hierarchical framework for the propagation of geodesic congruences that avoids the shell-crossing singularity by cutting the spacetime at the matter horizon and glueing to another spacetime with opposite orientation. We identify a relationship between the multi-scale hierarchical framework and the cosmological zoom-in N-body simulation approach, and relate the local sub-region that decouples from the Hubble flow to the region of interest in cosmological zoom-in N-body simulations. Most importantly, the multi-scale hierarchical framework provides a more robust way of implementing boundary conditions, which could benefit cosmological zoom-in N-body simulation approaches.