Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2002-09-27
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
18 pages, no figures, to appear in Proceedings of 9th Course on Astrofundamental Physics, International School D. Chalonge, Kl
Scientific paper
I review the basic ``gravitational instability'' model for the growth of structure in the expanding Universe. This model requires the existence of small initial irregularities in the density of a largely uniform universe. These grow through linear and non-linear stages to form a complex network of clusters, filaments and voids. The dynamical equations describing the evolution of a self-gravitating fluid can be rewritten in the form of a Schrodinger equation coupled to a Poisson equation determining the gravitational potential. This approach has a number of interesting features, many of which were pointed out in a seminal paper by Widrow & Kaiser (1993). I argue that this approach has the potential to yield useful analytic insights into the dynamical growth of large-scale structure. As a particular example, I show that this approach yields an elegant reformulation of an idea due to Jones (1999) concerning the origin of lognormal intermittency in the galaxy distribution.
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