English

Shell-crossing in a $\Lambda$CDM Universe

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2021-06-25 v2

Abstract

Perturbation theory is an indispensable tool for studying the cosmic large-scale structure, and establishing its limits is therefore of utmost importance. One crucial limitation of perturbation theory is shell-crossing, which is the instance when cold-dark-matter trajectories intersect for the first time. We investigate Lagrangian perturbation theory (LPT) at very high orders in the vicinity of the first shell-crossing for random initial data in a realistic three-dimensional Universe. For this we have numerically implemented the all-order recursion relations for the matter trajectories, from which the convergence of the LPT series at shell-crossing is established. Convergence studies performed up to the 40th order reveal the nature of the convergence-limiting singularities. These singularities are not the well-known density singularities at shell-crossing but occur at later times when LPT already ceased to provide physically meaningful results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.12584,
  title  = {Shell-crossing in a $\Lambda$CDM Universe},
  author = {Cornelius Rampf and Oliver Hahn},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.12584},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

5 pages + 7 pages supplementary material, 4 + 10 figures; v2: minor revisions, published at MNRAS Letters

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:36:01.851Z