Silk damping at a redshift of a billion: New limit on small-scale adiabatic perturbations

Donghui Jeong, Josef Pradler, Jens Chluba, Marc Kamionkowski

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89 Scopus citations

Abstract

We study the dissipation of small-scale adiabatic perturbations at early times when the Universe is hotter than T≃0.5keV. When the wavelength falls below the damping scale kD-1, the acoustic modes diffuse and thermalize, causing entropy production. Before neutrino decoupling, kD is primarily set by the neutrino shear viscosity, and we study the effect of acoustic damping on the relic neutrino number, primordial nucleosynthesis, dark-matter freeze-out, and baryogenesis. This sets a new limit on the amplitude of primordial fluctuations of ΔR2<0.007 at 104Mpc-1k105Mpc-1 and a model-dependent limit of ΔR20.3 at k1020-25Mpc-1.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number061301
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume113
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 5 2014

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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