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Vol. 53, No. 6
December 1999
pp. 995–1000
Pancakes and filaments in cosmological gravitational
clustering
VARUN SAHNI
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Post Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411 007, India
Abstract.
We consider the geometrical properties of a distribution of matter evolving under gravitational clustering. Such a distribution can be studied using standard statistical indicators such as the correlation function as well as geometrical descriptors sensitive to `connectedness' such as percolation analysis and Minkowski functionals. Applying these methods to N-body simulations and galaxy catalogues we find that the filling factor at the percolation threshold is usually very small reflecting the fact that the Universe consists of a network of filaments and pancakes, the latter being statistically more prominent.
KeywordsCosmology; large scale structure; topology; shape.
Pacs 2.0 |