The General Primordial Cosmic Perturbation

Details The General Primordial Cosmic Perturbation The General Primordial Cosmic Perturbation

1999-04-18

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9904231v2

Phys.Rev. D62 (2000) 083508

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

18 pages, 2 Postscript figures, uses revtex. Revised 2-2000 Minor errors corrected and some references added

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevD.62.083508

We consider the most general primordial cosmological perturbation in a universe filled with photons, baryons, neutrinos, and a hypothetical cold dark matter (CDM) component within the framework of linearized perturbation theory. We give a careful discussion of the different allowed modes, distinguishing modes which are regular at early times, singular at early times, or pure gauge. As well as the familiar growing and decaying adiabatic modes and the baryonic and CDM isocurvature modes we identify two {\it neutrino isocurvature} modes which do not seem to have been discussed before. In the first, the ratio of neutrinos to photons varies spatially but the net density perturbation vanishes. In the second the photon-baryon plasma and the neutrino fluid have a spatially varying relative bulk velocity, balanced so that the net momentum density vanishes. Possible mechanisms which could generate the two neutrino isocurvature modes are discussed. If one allows the most general regular primordial perturbation, all quadratic correlators of observables such as the microwave background anisotropy and matter perturbations are completely determined by a $5\times 5,$ real, symmetric matrix-valued function of co-moving wavenumber. In a companion paper we examine prospects for detecting or constraining the amplitudes of the most general allowed regular perturbations using present and future CMB data.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

The General Primordial Cosmic Perturbation does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with The General Primordial Cosmic Perturbation, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The General Primordial Cosmic Perturbation will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-84526