Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2001-07-31
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
17 pages including 3 figures, accepted by ApJ
Scientific paper
10.1086/323321
As increasingly precise information about the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background fluctuations is gathered with balloon and satellite experiments, interest has grown in foreground sources of opacity affecting these observations. One potentially important source is electron scattering produced by a post-recombination luminosity source, which would significantly attenuate the higher harmonics in the spectrum. If such an ionization source exists, then it would also heat the universe, hence increasing the Jeans mass and suppressing early gravitational structure formation. Here we consider the effects of such heating. We concentrate on one type of ionization source: luminosity generated by accretion onto primordial compact objects. We show that if such objects generate enough luminosity to affect the CMB power spectrum, then they would produce enough heat to prevent the formation of 1 sigma collapsed objects until redshifts of about 5, significantly less than the redshift at which baryonic collapse could otherwise occur. Such processes would leave signatures detectable by upcoming instruments such as NGST, SIRTF, and SWIFT.
Miller Michael Coleman
Ostriker Eve C.
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