Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-general-relativity-and-cosmology-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2012/3/c/solution
Past exam of the general relativity and cosmology course of the University of Oxford 2012 3 c Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
A radial null ray satisfies . Define the present-normalized radial comoving distanceFor , write . Integration gives , so . Two neighboring pulses on the same comoving path obey , hence . For the angular diameter distance in an open dust universe, a transverse source size defines the angular diameter distance . Thus
Since , the dust-plus-curvature expansion givesAt a specified source redshift, the only independent cosmological parameters in this integral are and . The distance necessarily also has a source-position argument; it cannot be a constant for all sources.
For , the integral can be writtenThe apparently singular parameter endpoints have regular limits: gives , and gives . The flat-curvature distance limit is . For a negative , the transverse distance uses sine with instead of hyperbolic sine; that closed case is outside the almost-empty open model, but explains the convention behind the square root.
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