Nonequilibrium thermodynamics and cosmological pancake formation

Romain Teyssier, Jean Pierre Chiéze, Jean Michel Alimi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

We investigate the influence of nonequilibrium thermodynamics on cosmological structure formation. In this paper, we consider the collapse of the planar perturbations usually called "Zeldovich pancakes." We have developed for that purpose a new two-fluid (gas and dark matter) hydrodynamical code, with three different thermodynamical species: electrons, ions, and neutral particles, Te ≠ Ti ≠ Tn. We describe in detail the complex structure of accretion shock waves. We include several relevant processes for a low-density, high-temperature collisional plasma: nonequilibrium chemical reactions, cooling, shock heating, thermal energy equipartition between electrons, ions, and neutral particles, and electronic conduction. We find two different regions in the pancake structure: a thermal precursor ahead of the compression front and an equipartition wave after the compression front, where electron and ion temperatures differ significantly. This complex structure may have two interesting consequences: preheating of unshocked regions in the vicinity of massive X-ray clusters and ion and electron temperature differences in the outer regions of X-ray clusters.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)62-73
Number of pages12
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume509
Issue number1 PART I
DOIs
StatePublished - 1998
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

Keywords

  • Cosmology: theory
  • Hydrodynamics
  • Methods: numerical

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