 Harrison-Peebles-Zeldovich spectrum

The Harrison-Peebles-Zeldovich spectrum is the scale-invariant primordial growing-mode spectrum: in a fixed conformal time slice before cosmological horizon crossing, the matter power spectrum is proportional to ${\tau }^{4}k$ in the usual growing-mode density convention. At horizon entry ${\tau }_H\sim k^{-1}$, its dimensionless mass variance $k^{3}P(k,{\tau }_H)$ is independent of $k$. This statement fixes a spectral shape, not its amplitude. Radiation domination subsequently suppresses small-scale density growth through the Mészáros effect, producing the asymptotic matter power spectrum $P\propto k^{-3}{\ln }^2(k/k_{\mathrm{eq}})$ after matter-radiation equality.