Negative skewness of radial pairwise velocity in the quasi-nonlinear regime: Zel'dovich approximation

Abstract

According to N-body numerical simulations, the radial pairwise velocities of galaxies have negative skewness in the quasi-nonlinear regime. To understand its origin, we calculate the probability distribution function of the radial pairwise velocity using the Zel'dovich approximation, i.e., an analytical approximation for gravitational clustering. The calculated probability distribution function is in good agreement with the result of N-body simulations. Thus the negative skewness originates in relative motions of galaxies in the clustering process that the infall dominates over the expansion.