Statistics of caustics in large-scale structure formation

Abstract

The cosmic web is a complex spatial pattern of walls, filaments, cluster nodes and underdense void regions. It emerged through gravitational amplification from the Gaussian primordial density field. Here we infer analytical expressions for the spatial statistics of caustics in the evolving large-scale mass distribution. In our analysis, following the quasi-linear Zel'dovich formalism and confined to the 1D and 2D situation, we compute number density and correlation properties of caustics in cosmic density fields that evolve from Gaussian primordial conditions. The analysis can be straightforwardly extended to the 3D situation. We moreover, are currently extending the approach to the non-linear regime of structure formation by including higher order Lagrangian approximations and Lagrangian effective field theory.