Cosmology in one dimension: Vlasov dynamics.

Abstract

Numerical simulations of self-gravitating systems are generally based on N-body codes, which solve the equations of motion of a large number of interacting particles. This approach suffers from poor statistical sampling in regions of low density. In contrast, Vlasov codes, by meshing the entire phase space, can reach higher accuracy irrespective of the density. Here, we perform one-dimensional Vlasov simulations of a long-standing cosmological problem, namely, the fractal properties of an expanding Einstein-de Sitter universe in Newtonian gravity. The N-body results are confirmed for high-density regions and extended to regions of low matter density, where the N-body approach usually fails.