The terms in the Boltzmann equation respectively describe dilution by expansion, pair annihilation, and pair production from the thermal bath. The annihilation rate per volume is ; is the corresponding production rate. Antiparticles satisfy the same equation with replaced by . Subtracting gives
Initial particle-antiparticle symmetry therefore persists. Detailed balance in the thermal bath gives , so
During radiation domination, with fixed effective relativistic degrees of freedom, and . Thus and the dilution terms cancel in :
After cosmological particle freeze-out, neglect . For constant the exact reduced solution is
For the post-freeze-out relic abundance, the familiar answer additionally neglects compared with . It is an approximation, not an exact consequence of the post-freeze-out equation without initial data. A smaller annihilation cross-section means smaller , earlier decoupling and less depletion, so weakly interacting particles normally have a larger relic abundance.
Sperner's lemma says that a triangulated triangle whose vertices are labelled , with each outer vertex having its own label and each boundary edge using only its endpoint labels, contains a small triangle with all three labels. In fact the number of such triangles is odd. Count incidences of small triangles with edges labelled . Interior edges contribute twice. On the outer edge, the number of changes between these labels is odd; the other two outer edges contribute zero. A small triangle contributes one incidence if it has all three labels, two if it uses both but not , and zero otherwise. The total parity proves the assertion.
The resulting no-retraction theorem is: there is no continuous retraction of a closed disc onto its boundary. Work first with a closed triangle . If fixes the boundary, colour each vertex of increasingly fine triangulations by an index of a largest barycentric coordinate of . The largest coordinate is at least ; on the boundary the colouring satisfies Sperner's lemma. Choose a tricoloured small triangle in each triangulation. By compactness and shrinking mesh, a subsequence of their three vertices converges to one point . Continuity forces all three barycentric coordinates of to be at least , so is the triangle's centre, contradicting . A homeomorphism of a disc with proves the disc assertion.
Brouwer fixed-point theorem states that every continuous self-map of a closed disc has a fixed point. If it had none, the ray from through would meet the boundary beyond , continuously in . That intersection defines a retraction, since a boundary point is already the outgoing intersection. This contradicts the no-retraction theorem.
Finally fix and define . The displacement bound implies , so maps the closed radius- disc centred at into itself. Brouwer fixed-point theorem gives , which is exactly . Since was arbitrary, is surjective.
The flat matter-dominated Friedmann equation gives when . With ,
For linear density modes with polytropic pressure, substitution gives the Euler-Cauchy equation
A power law has exponent satisfying . Thus, for distinct roots,
For , the two modes approach and : gravity produces a growing linear cosmological density perturbation and a decaying mode. For , put ; the real solution is
These are pressure-supported oscillations with a decaying envelope. For the repeated-root cosmological density mode , the complete solution is . The specified separates real exponents from logarithmic oscillations; the growing exponent actually crosses zero at , a slightly smaller value.

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