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

Abstract: 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. The shear is found to be remarkable stable to the choice of scale, while the vorticity is found to quickly decay with increasing spatial scale or redshift. The vorticity emerges out of the linear regime randomly oriented with respect to the shear eigenvectors. Non-linear evolution drives the vorticity to lie within the plane defined by the eigenvector of the fastest collapse. Within that plane the vorticity first gets aligned with the middle eigenvector and then it moves to be preferentially aligned with the third eigenvector, of slowest collapse. Finally a scale of "non-linearity" to be used when calculating properties of the non-linear deformation tensor at different redshifts is suggested.