The Glass-like Universe: Real-space correlation properties of standard cosmological models

Abstract

After reviewing the basic relevant properties of stationary stochastic processes (SSP), defining basic terms and quantities, we discuss the properties of the so-called Harrison-Zeldovich like spectra. These correlations, usually characterized exclusively in k-space (i.e. in terms of power spectra P(k)), are a fundamental feature of all current standard cosmological models. Examining them in real space we note their characteristics to be a {\it negative} power law tail ξ(r) \sim - r^{-4} and a {\it sub-poissonian} normalised variance in spheres σ^2(R) \sim R^{-4} \ln R. We note in particular that this latter behaviour is at the limit of the most rapid decay (\sim R^{-4}) of this quantity possible for any stochastic distribution (continuous or discrete). This very particular characteristic is usually obscured in cosmology by the use of Gaussian spheres. In a simple classification of all SSP into three categories, we highlight with the name ``super-homogeneous'' the properties of the class to which models like this, with P(0)=0, belong. In statistical physics language they are well described as glass-like. They do not have either ``scale-invariant'' features, in the sense of critical phenomena, nor fractal properties. We illustrate their properties with some simple examples, in particular that of a ``shuffled'' lattice.