Abstract
We describe a cosmological kinetic theory for the formation and relaxation of dark matter halos in hierarchical models of structure formation based on cold dark matter. This kinetic theory introduces a new way to calculate the evolution of the phase‐space distribution of dark matter particles in galaxy halos, which traditionally have been investigated by numerical N‐body methods. We find that Gaussian fluctuations in second‐order cosmological perturbation theory lead to a Fokker‐Planck equation, which is well known to describe the classical Brownian motion and globular clusters. We contrast the three systems and discuss possible extensions of this kinetic approach into the fully nonlinear regime of structure formation.
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