The Origin of Spatial Intermittency in the Galaxy Distribution

Abstract

The dynamical equations describing the evolution of a self-gravitating fluid can be rewritten in the form of a Schrodinger equation coupled to a Poisson equation determining the gravitational potential. This approach has a number of interesting features, many of which were pointed out in a seminal paper by Widrow & Kaiser (1993). In particular we show that this approach yields an elegant reformulation of an idea due to Jones (1999) concerning the origin of lognormal intermittency in the galaxy distribution.