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arXiv · 2508.04237

The Fluctuation Theory, Critical Phenomena and Gravitational Clustering of Galaxies

M. S. Khan·M. H. Abdullah·Shah Zahir·Farooq Owais·Azmat Khan
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Abstract

We investigate the phenomenon of clustering of galaxies in an expanding universe by applying the fluctuation theory. We evaluate the fluctuation moments for the number of particles and the correlated fluctuations for number and energy of particles, clustering under their mutual gravitation. The correlated fluctuations $<ΔNΔU>$ show that the value of $<ΔN>$ can be both positive as well as negative, because it is the difference between $N$ and the mean value of $N$. A negative $<ΔN>$ corresponds to regions of under density and positive $<ΔN>$ corresponds to regions of over density, as described by the clustering parameter $b$. The present work is concerned in the region $b\ge 0$, at which gravitational interaction has already started causing the galaxies to cluster. Thus for this work the value of $<ΔN>$ is positive. Similarly, the energy fluctuations $<ΔU>$ can also be both positive and negative. For large correlations, the overdense regions typically have negative total energy and underdense regions have usually positive total energy. The critical value at which this switch occurs has been calculated analytically. The results obtained by fluctuation theory closely match with those obtained earlier by Specific heat analysis and Lee Yang theory. The evaluation has been extended to multicomponent systems, having a variety of masses. It has been found that the gravitational clustering of galaxies is more sensitive to mass ratios and less sensitive to galaxies number densities. This means there is little effect of $ν$ (number density) but significant effect of $μ$ (mass) on the clustering phenomenon. The clustering of galaxies is quicker when mass of individual galaxies increases. As the mass of galaxies increases, the transition from positive to negative energy occurs at a higher stage of clustering as compared to a single component system.

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M. S. Khan, M. H. Abdullah, Shah Zahir, Farooq Owais, Azmat Khan. 2025-08-06. The Fluctuation Theory, Critical Phenomena and Gravitational Clustering of Galaxies. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04237

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