Related papers: Complexity in Cosmology
Rich clusters of galaxies, the largest virialized systems known, provide a powerful tool for the study of cosmology. Some of the fundamental questions that can be addressed with clusters of galaxies include: how did galaxies and large-scale…
This paper presents an analysis of the smoothness problem in cosmology by focussing on the ambiguities originated in the simplifying hypotheses aimed at observationally verifying if the large-scale distribution of galaxies is homogeneous,…
In the last years there has been a growing interest in the understanding a vast variety of scale invariant and critical phenomena occurring in nature. Experiments and observations indeed suggest that many physical systems develop…
Models of structure formation in the universe postulate that matter distributions observed today in galaxy catalogs arise, through a complex non-linear dynamics, by gravitational evolution from a very uniform initial state. Dark matter…
Some years ago we proposed a new approach for the analysis of galaxy and cluster correlations based on the concepts and methods of modern statistical physics. This led to the surprising result that galaxy correlations are fractal and not…
The properties of spatial distribution of luminous matter are investigated analysing all the available three dimensional catalogues of galaxies. In standard view, galaxies are believed to have a fractal distribution at small scale with a…
These lectures cover various aspects of the statistical description of cosmological density fields. Observationally, this consists of the point process defined by galaxies, and the challenge is to relate this to the continuous density field…
I review the standard paradigm for understanding the formation and evolution of cosmic structure, based on the gravitational instability of dark matter, but many variations on this basic theme are viable. Despite the great progress that has…
We discuss the problem of galaxy correlations by considering the various methods by which this information can be obtained. We focus in particular on the volume limited three dimensional samples and discuss a new way to increase the scale…
How is the universe organized on large scales? How did this structure evolve from the unknown initial conditions to the present time? The answers to these questions will shed light on the cosmology we live in, the amount, composition and…
Galaxy structures are certainly fractal up to a certain crossover scale \lambda_0. A clear determination of such a scale is still missing. Usually, the conceptual and practical implications of this property are neglected and the structures…
Several problems in cosmology and astrophysics are described in which critical phenomena of various types may play a role. These include the organization of the disks of spiral galaxies, various aspects of the problem of structure formation…
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
We are learning much about how structure forms, in particular how clusters as nodes in the cosmic web evolve and accrete matter, and about the physical processes within these objects. In the next decade, the study of clusters will enable us…
This thesis focuses on characterizing the distribution of points and galaxies using multifractal analysis. In this attempt the main emphasis is on calculating the Minkowski-Bouligand fractal dimension (Dq) of the distribution of points over…
Studies of galaxy clusters have proved crucial in helping to establish the standard model of cosmology, with a universe dominated by dark matter and dark energy. A theoretical basis that describes clusters as massive, multi-component,…
We review several aspects of clusters of galaxies and their application to cosmology. We present first results of numerical simulations of the dynamics of the intra-cluster gas and of different interaction processes between cluster galaxies…
In this review, we describe our current understanding of cluster formation: from the general picture of collapse from initial density fluctuations in an expanding Universe to detailed simulations of cluster formation including the effects…
This paper presents a review of the fractal approach for describing the large scale distribution of galaxies. We start by presenting a brief, but general, introduction to fractals, which emphasizes their empirical side and applications…
Galaxy morphology is a product of how galaxies formed, how they interacted with their environment, how they were influenced by internal perturbations, AGN, and dark matter, and of their varied star formation histories. This article reviews…