5–7 Oct 2026
EPFL
Europe/Zurich timezone

Relaxation of Cold Dark Matter Systems to Lynden-Bell Equilibria

6 Oct 2026, 15:50
40m
Bernoulli center (EPFL)

Bernoulli center

EPFL

GA 3 34 (Building GA) Station 5 CH-1015 Ecublens Switzerland Coordinates on Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TSx44GXiANdZa9KB9
Oral presentation Main track Violent relaxation

Speaker

Barry Ginat (University of Oxford)

Description

Gravitational collapse in large-scale structure formation is a highly non-linear process, governed by the Vlasov-Poisson system. In this talk, I will describe how this process leads to a flow of structure to small phase-space scales, in a manner which gives rise to a universal power-law scaling of the phase-space power-spectrum at small scales. Then, I will describe how this process leads to a relaxation of the mean field, towards a generalised Lynden-Bell distribution (in 1D). This distribution has a specific power-law tail in energy, which can be derived using statistical mechanical techniques. I will also comment on 3D implications for violent relaxation.

Author

Barry Ginat (University of Oxford)

Co-authors

Mr Michael Nastac (University of Oxford) Robert Ewart (Princeton University) Prof. Alexander Schekochihin (University of Oxford)

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.