Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2012 iii Paper 53 4 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
The broad turnover near marks the matter-radiation equality scale. Modes entering the Hubble radius after matter-radiation equality grow efficiently during matter domination. Modes entering earlier have their cold-matter growth delayed by radiation domination: their subhorizon growth is logarithmic rather than proportional to . This is the Mészáros effect. The smaller undulations on the declining side are baryon acoustic oscillations inherited from the photon-baryon fluid, with an oscillatory wavenumber spacing set approximately by divided by the sound horizon. They are damped at sufficiently short scales by photon diffusion and the transfer of the baryon perturbation into the total matter field. The plotted spectrum is a linear prediction; nonlinear evolution changes the actual sufficiently small-scale spectrum at redshift zero.
For an adiabatic growing mode, the comoving curvature perturbation transfers to the matter overdensity asup to an irrelevant overall sign convention for . Normalize the cosmological transfer function by at small and the linear growth factor by in matter domination. The relation distinguishes a dimensional matter power spectrum from a dimensionless cosmological power spectrum: the dimensional curvature spectrum is proportional to . ThereforeFor locally constant scalar spectral index , the asymptotic cold-dark-matter power spectrum isbecause the cold-dark-matter transfer function tends to one at small and scales as at large . The asymptotes refer to the smooth envelope, not the individual baryonic wiggles. The large- local logarithmic slope is . For the quadratic potential at , derived below, , so the limiting powers are approximately and . Multiplying by to form dimensionless matter power would change both exponents by three; that is not the plotted quantity.