The formation and evolution of large- and superlarge-scale structure in the universe -I: General Theory

A quantitative theory, based on the Zeldovich approximation, to provide an approximate description of the evolution of structure is presented. We give an expression for the characteristic scale of superlarge-scale structure which can also be applied to power spectra with a Harrison-Zeldovich asymptotic. The evolution of the characteristic scale of large-scale structure is described with an analytical expression. It corresponds to the mean separation of filaments or chains of galaxies. We apply the theory to some simulations and show that the theoretically defined characteristic scale for LSS does also correspond to the 'physical measurement' of the mean separation of dark matter LSS elements. This supports our claim for a new theory for the quantitative description of the formation and evolution of large-scale structure in the universe.