The Cloud in cloud problem in the Press-Schechter formalism of hierarchical structure formation

Aug, 1994
13 pages
Published in:
  • Astrophys.J. 448 (1995) 1-17
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Abstract: (arXiv)
The formalism by Press and Schechter (PS) is often used to infer number densities of virialized objects of mass M (e.g. quasars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, etc.) from a count of initially overdense regions in a Gaussian density perturbation field. We reanalyze the PS-formalism by explicitly counting underdense regions which are embedded within overdense regions, so called cloud-in-clouds. In contrast to the original PS-formalism, our revised analysis automatically accounts for all the cosmic material. We find that mass distribution functions for virialized objects are altered by the proper solution of the cloud-in-cloud problem. These altered distribution functions agree much better with distribution functions inferred form N-body simulations than the original PS-distribution functions.