Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2025/iii/paper-346/3/a/solution

Before recombination, tight coupling makes photons and baryons share an adiabatic perturbation. Since and only radiation supplies appreciable pressure,
Thus the photon-baryon sound speed is
Because and ,
After cosmological recombination, baryons decouple from radiation; for adiabatically cooling nonrelativistic gas, and .
The Comoving Jeans length is
During radiation domination , so . During matter domination before recombination, and , so is approximately constant. Recombination causes a sharp downward jump in sound speed, after which . The requested log-log sketch therefore rises with slope one, reaches a plateau after equality, drops at recombination, and then declines with slope .
For collisionless particles, replace by their one-dimensional velocity dispersion :
For a thermally produced cold relic, identify four epochs:
  • while coupled and relativistic, and in radiation domination;
  • after decoupling but while still relativistic, momentum redshifts but speed remains near , so the same scaling continues with collisionless free streaming;
  • after becoming nonrelativistic but before equality, and , giving ;
  • after equality, and , giving .
Its plot rises through the two relativistic epochs, turns onto a plateau at the nonrelativistic transition, and falls after equality. Recombination does not dynamically affect collisionless dark matter.

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