On the Kinematic Morphology around Halos

Abstract

In this paper, we report an interesting kinematic phenomenon around the halos' edge related to the splashback radius. After the shell-crossing, cosmic flow exhibits various rotational morphologies via stream-mixing. Vorticity is generated in a particular way that coincides with the large-scale structure. Notably, one specific flow morphology, which is spiraling inward and compressing in the third direction, concentrates around halos. A detailed examination that reveals a sharp change in the logarithmic derivative of its volume fraction, coincides with the location of the splashback radius defined as the outermost caustic structure. Such a feature encodes valuable phase space information and provides a new perspective on understanding the dynamical evolution of halos. As a volume-weighted quantity, the profile of flow morphology is purely kinematic. And unlike other related studies, the rotational flow morphologies capture the anisotropic phase structure in the multi-stream region.