Comoving coordinate

A comoving coordinate remains fixed for an observer following the homogeneous cosmological expansion.

A comoving volume has fixed boundaries in comoving coordinates. Its physical volume grows as the cube of the scale factor. In a homogeneous adiabatic gas, cosmological entropy conservation makes $sV$ constant.

Comoving number density is object count per comoving volume. With scale factor normalized to unity today, proper density is $n_p=a^{-3}{n}_c$. A conserved population moving with homogeneous expansion has constant $n_c$ despite declining proper density. Formation, mergers or changing sample selection can make $n_c$ evolve.

Peculiar velocity is motion relative to the homogeneous Hubble flow. In comoving coordinates,where $\mathbf{u}$ is physical velocity and $\mathbf{v}$ is peculiar velocity.

For a fluid in an expanding universe, the peculiar-velocity equation is the Euler equations for an inviscid fluid after decomposing physical velocity into Hubble flow and peculiar velocity. It contains the Hubble-drag term $H\mathbf{v}$ and force $-\nabla \Phi /a$ from the peculiar gravitational potential.

The peculiar-velocity divergence is $\theta =\nabla \cdot \mathbf{v}$. For irrotational linear perturbations it captures the scalar part of the peculiar velocity field.