Power-law correlation and discreteness in cosmological N-body simulations
Abstract
We present an analysis with several simple real-space statistics of the Virgo consortium's cosmological N-body simulations. Significant clustering rapidly develops well below the initial mean interparticle separation \Lambda_i, at scales at which the gravitational force on a particle is dominated by that with its nearest neighbours. An approximate power-law behaviour in the two point correlation function emerges, which in the subsequent evolution is continuously amplified and shifted to larger scales, in a roughly self-similar manner. We draw the conclusion that what is essential in the development of these correlations are the density fluctuations at the smallest scales due to the particle-like (i.e. discrete) nature of the distribution being evolved, and not, as usually supposed, the very small continuous (fluid-like) fluctuations at scales larger than \Lambda_i .Keywords
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