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The peculiar Jeans length

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Tsagas, Christos G 

Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pTypical observers in the universe do not follow the smooth Hubble expansion, but move relative to it. Such bulk peculiar motions introduce a characteristic scale that is closely analogous to the familiar Jeans length. This “peculiar Jeans length” marks the threshold below which relative-motion effects dominate the linear kinematics. There, cosmological measurements can vary considerably between the bulk-flow frame and that of the Hubble expansion, entirely due to the observers’ relative motion. When dealing with the deceleration parameter, we find that the peculiar Jeans length varies between few and several hundred Mpc. On these scales, the deceleration parameter measured by the bulk-flow observers can be considerably larger (or smaller) than its Hubble-frame counterpart. This depends on whether the peculiar motion is locally expanding (or contracting), relative to the background expansion. Then, provided expanding and contracting bulk flows are randomly distributed, nearly half of the observers in the universe could be misled to think that their cosmos is over-decelerated. The rest of them, on the other hand, may come to believe that their universe is under-decelerated, or even accelerated in some cases. We make two phenomenological predictions that could in principle support this scenario.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

5107 Particle and High Energy Physics, 5101 Astronomical Sciences, 5102 Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 51 Physical Sciences

Journal Title

The European Physical Journal C

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1434-6044
1434-6052

Volume Title

81

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Sponsorship
Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (789)