A cellular automaton model of gravitational clustering

Roya Mohayaee and Luciano Pietronero

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2003, vol. 323, issue C, 445-452

Abstract: Gravitational clustering of a random distribution of point masses is dominated by the effective short-range interactions due to large-scale isotropy. We introduce a one-dimensional cellular automaton to reproduce this effect in the most schematic way: at each time particles move towards their nearest neighbours with whom they coalesce on collision. This model shows an extremely rich phenomenology with features of scale-invariant dynamics leading to a tree-like structure in space–time whose topological self-similarity are characterised with universal exponents. Our model suggests a simple interpretation of the non-analytic hierarchical clustering and can reproduce some of the self-similar features of gravitational N-body simulations.

Date: 2003
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:323:y:2003:i:c:p:445-452

DOI: 10.1016/S0378-4371(02)01990-8

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