2001/02/28 by S. Matarrese, Sabino Matarrese, Roya Mohayaee · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Classical mechanics #Dark matter #Drag #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Intergalactic travel #Mechanics #Perturbation (astronomy) #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Quasar #Redshift #Reionization #Scientific Research and Discoveries #Structure formation #astro-ph #cond-mat #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.04944.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 329 (2002) 37-60 · 26 pages, 6 figures, MNRAS in press (accepted version)
arxiv created 2001/09/08 · openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A ‘stochastic adhesion’ model is introduced, with the purpose of describing the formation and evolution of mildly non-linear structures, such as sheets and filaments, in the intergalactic medium (IGM), after hydrogen reionization. The model is based on replacing the overall force acting on the baryon fluid – which results from the combination of local gravity, pressure gradients and Hubble drag – by a mock external force, self-consistently calculated from first-order perturbation theory. A small kinematic viscosity term prevents shell-crossing on small scales (which arises because of the approximate treatment of pressure gradients). The emerging scheme is an extension of the well-known adhesion approximation for the dark matter dynamics, from which it differs only by the presence of a small-scale ‘random’ force, characterizing the IGM. Our algorithm is the ideal tool to obtain the skeleton of the IGM distribution, which is responsible for the structure observed in the low column density Lyα forest in the absorption spectra of distant quasars.