A Frozen-Flow Approximation to the Evolution of Large-Scale Structures in the Universe

A new approximation to the evolution of large-scale structures in the Universe is proposed which is based on neglecting the role of particle inertia compared to the damping implied by the Hubble drag. We call this approximation frozen flow because particles move by updating at each step their velocity to the local value of the peculiar velocity field, here approximated by its growing linear mode: stream-lines are then frozen to their initial shape. The situation is quite different from that of the Zel'dovich algorithm, where the velocity is kept constant along each particle trajectory