Recombination softening and reheating of the cosmic plasma

Sep, 2003
13 pages
Published in:
  • Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 349 (2004) 632
e-Print:

Citations per year

20052006200720081532
Abstract: (arXiv)
The atomic recombination process leads to a softening of the matter equation of state as reflected by a reduced generalized adiabatic index, with accompanying heat release. We study the effects of this recombination softening and reheating of the cosmic plasma on the ionization history, visibility function, Cold Dark Matter (CDM) transfer function, and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectra. The resulting modifications of the CMB spectrm is 1/10 of WMAP's current error and is comparable to PLANCK's error. Therefore, this effect should be considered when data with higher accuracy are analysed.