Why does the jeans swindle work?

Abstract

When measuring the mass profile of any given cosmological structure through internal kinematics, the distant background density is always ignored. This trick is often referred to as the 'Jeans Swindle'. Without this trick a divergent term from the background density renders the mass profile undefined; however, this trick has no formal justification.We show that when one includes the expansion of the Universe in the Jeans equation, a term appears which exactly cancels the divergent term from the background. We thereby establish a formal justification for using the Jeans Swindle. © 2013 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.