The velocity shear and vorticity across redshifts and non-linear scales

Understand

The evolution of the large scale distribution of matter in the universe is often characterized by the density field.

• Here we take a complimentary approach and characterize it using the cosmic velocity field, specifically the deformation of the velocity field.
• The deformation tensor is decomposed into its symmetric component (known as the "shear tensor") and its anti-symmetric part (the "vorticity").
• Using a high resolution cosmological simulation we examine the relative orientations of the shear and the vorticity as a function of spatial scale and redshift.