Stability of small-scale baryon perturbations during cosmological recombination
Sep 3, 201422 pages
Published in:
- Phys.Rev.D 91 (2015) 12, 123009
- Published: Jun 16, 2015
e-Print:
- 1409.1240 [astro-ph.CO]
Citations per year
Abstract: (APS)
In this paper, we study small-scale fluctuations (baryon pressure sound waves) in the baryon fluid during recombination. In particular, we look at their evolution in the presence of relative velocities between baryons and photons on large scales (k∼10-1 Mpc-1), which are naturally present during the era of decoupling. Previous work concluded that the fluctuations grow due to an instability of sound waves in a recombining plasma, but that the growth factor is small for typical cosmological models. These analyses model recombination in an inhomogenous universe as a perturbation to the parameters of the homogenous solution. We show that for relevant wave numbers k≳103 Mpc-1 the dynamics are significantly altered by the transport of both ionizing continuum (hν>13.6 eV) and Lyman-α photons between crests and troughs of the density perturbations. We solve the radiative transfer of photons in both these frequency ranges and incorporate the results in a perturbed three-level atom model. We conclude that the instability persists at intermediate scales. We use the results to estimate a distribution of growth rates in 107 random realizations of large-scale relative velocities. Our results indicate that there is no appreciable growth; out of these 107 realizations, the maximum growth factor we find is less than ≈1.2 at wave numbers of k≈103 Mpc-1. The instability’s low growth factors are due to the relatively short duration of the recombination epoch during which the electrons and photons are coupled.Note:
- 20 pages, 13 figures, updated with published version
- 95.30.Lz
- 52.35.Mw
- 95.30.Jx
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