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ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2001/iii/paper-67/5/i/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 67 5 i Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For two neighboring comoving points separated along the zeroth-order direction by coordinate distance , the synchronous gauge spatial metric gives the cosmological proper distanceDifferentiate with respect to cosmic time at fixed coordinate separation. To first order,A photon crosses this neighboring interval in when , so its local relative recession velocity isAt each infinitesimal step, the local Doppler effect gives . ThereforeThe first term integrates to the homogeneous cosmological redshift, . Subtracting it isolates the metric contribution to the fractional frequency shift. A shifted blackbody radiation spectrum has its temperature shifted by the same fraction as its photon frequencies, givingThe dot denotes a partial time derivative at fixed comoving position, evaluated along the zeroth-order null geodesic. It is not the total derivative of along the ray, so the integral cannot in general be replaced by a difference of at the endpoints. Deflection of the ray or its direction multiplies an already first-order metric perturbation and is second order here. This is the metric part of the Sachs-Wolfe effect in the negative-spatial-perturbation convention; an intrinsic emission temperature fluctuation or an emitter velocity would add separate boundary terms. The time derivative is present in the original PDF, although missing from the converted TeX's displayed integral.
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