Widely Applicable Insights into the Time Evolution of Massive Gaussian Random Particle Distributions

Abstract

In cosmology, the Zel’dovich approximation is broadly used to describe how massive particles evolve to form cosmic structures. Insights gleaned from studying structure formation on cosmological scales have now been shown to also apply to smaller-scale physical systems, including Rydberg gases and protoplanetary disks, beginning from a near-uniform Gaussian random distribution of particles.