Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2007/iii/paper-62/4/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 62 4 a Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
A perturbation of the inflaton shifts its local clock: . Regions with different clock shifts reach the end of inflation at different times and hence undergo different amounts of expansion. The inflaton clock-shift origin of curvature perturbations gives a local expansion difference of magnitude . The sign depends on whether denotes a clock advance or a delay to a fixed end value.
The comoving curvature perturbation has amplitude . For adiabatic evolution, superhorizon conservation of single-field comoving curvature carries this amplitude into the later growing density contrast, with the numerical conversion depending on the epoch and the density slice. Thus the approximate density-amplitude statement in the question follows; it does not identify the density contrast and in every gauge.
The frozen scalar power per is , so the slow-roll curvature power spectrum isConsequently , giving the requested approximate growing-density spectrum. Both and are evaluated separately when each Fourier mode undergoes cosmological horizon exit.
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