Evolution Of Gravitational Potential In The Quasilinear And Nonlinear Regimes

Abstract

We study the evolution of the power spectrum of gravitational potential during the nonlinear clustering in an $Ω=1$ matter dominated phase. N-body simulations suggest that the potential does not evolve in time even in the quasilinear phase for an $n=-1$ power spectrum. For $n=-2$, the potential evolves in the quasilinear phase but not in the extreme nonlinear phase. Becauase of these facts, the evolution of the gravitational potential in spectra like CDM is less than what would have been expected naively. We discuss a class of CDM like models in which such an interesting conspiracy between the amplitude and local index occurs.