The mesofractal universe driven by Rayleigh-Lévy walks (Q702876)

There is an increasing number of problems in various fields -- biology, finance, astrophysics, cosmology -- where broad power-law probability distributions are identified and where, consequently, Lévy statistics play an important role [\textit{K.-I. Sato}, Lévy Processes and Infinitely Divisible Distributions. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne) (1999; Zbl 0973.60001); \textit{W. Paul, J. Baschnagel}, Stochastic Processes. From Physics of Finance. Springer-Verlag, (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York) (1999; Zbl 0949.60008); \textit{F. Bardou, J.-P. Bouchaud, A. Aspect, C. Cohen-Tannoudji}, Lévy Statistics and Laser Cooling: How rare events bring atoms to rest. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne) (2002; Zbl 1058.81800)]. A majority of cosmologists believe that the structure of the universe is governed by the fair sample hypothesis which includes (i) the Copernican principle, (ii) the ergodic principle, and (iii) the cosmological principle [\textit{P. J. E. Peebles}, The Large Scale Structure of the Universe. Princeton University Press, (Princeton, New Jersey) (1980)]. The paper under review is concerned with a description of the inhomogeneous structure of the universe in terms of a random walk model admitting a power law transition probability. An appropriate choice of the parameters involved in the Lévy flight model provides the mesofractal structure of the universe. The model reveals fractal properties of the mass point or galaxy distribution at small scales and yields a homogeneous Poisson distribution at large scales. In this way, the model satisfactorily reproduces the main characteristics of the visible distribution of galaxies in the universe including the relation between two-point and three-point correlation functions. The mesofractal approach to cosmology can be considered as some kind of descriptive statistics allowing the extraction of a reduced number of characteristic parameters of the inhomogeneous universe, the most condensed being the reduction to the energy density or mass per unit volume of the static universe which is important for any prediction of the future evolution of the universe [\textit{N. Straumann}, On the cosmological constant problem and the astronomical evidence for a homogeneous energy density with negative pressure. Poincaré Seminar 2002, 7--51 (2003; Zbl 1054.83044); \textit{E. J. Copeland}, Inflation -- In the early unverse and today. In: N. Bréton et al., Editors, The early universe and observational cosmology. Lect. Notes Phys. 646, 53--107 (2004; Zbl 1075.83040)].