Write and . Under the stated matter-era growing-mode approximation, , and ignoring velocities removes the Doppler CMB anisotropy. The two peaks of the cosmological visibility function give the Cosmic microwave background line-of-sight solution
Apply the same solution with observation time , just before the thin reionization screen. Between recombination and that screen there is no further scattering, so free propagation gives
A direction-independent potential commutes with the angular average. Thus the incoming photon monopole plus the potential at the screen is
Substitution gives
This derivation inherits the neglected scattering quadrupole and polarization assumptions of part (ii); the screen is an idealized isotropizing approximation.
For a plane Fourier mode , the angular average is explicit:
where is the zeroth Spherical Bessel function. The mode's observed transfer is
If , the rescattered monopole is suppressed by at least , because the incoming directions sample incoherent phases. If , and the two propagation phases agree to leading order. The two weights then sum to one. Consequently
These are the small-scale damping and large-scale coherence limits of reionization damping of cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy.
Each small-scale primary temperature amplitude is multiplied by , so its Cosmic microwave background power spectrum is multiplied by . Holding transfer parameters fixed,
Many measured high- modes determine this combination accurately. Their derivatives and are degenerate: a change leaves the leading temperature spectrum unchanged. The undamped large-scale modes can distinguish the parameters, but there are few of them and cosmic variance gives fractional full-sky uncertainty per multipole. This explains the primordial-amplitude–optical-depth degeneracy. Polarization from reionization, lensing, and more complete late-time effects partly break it. The TeX's final is a transcription mismatch; the PDF uses consistently.
Let and let differentiate along the unperturbed photon trajectory. Use to decompose the Thomson scattering gain term:
The Orthogonality of Legendre polynomials identifies as a pure photon quadrupole. Dropping is an approximation, justified when tight coupling makes the scattering quadrupole small; the supplied unpolarized equation already neglects polarization corrections. The Cosmic microwave background line-of-sight solution requested here omits that quadrupole source.
Set . Adding to the Photon Boltzmann equation with Thomson scattering yields
Along , the integrating factor is because . Consequently
An early optically thick boundary makes vanish for finite initial perturbations, and . Therefore
Here and are partial time derivatives, not total derivatives along the ray. We work at first order in scalar cosmological perturbations, evaluate sources along the background radial null geodesic in FLRW spacetime, and ignore observer peculiar velocity. Perturbed paths and lensing affect this first-order source solution only at higher perturbative order. A moving observer adds its local Doppler dipole.
The original PDF, unlike the transcribed TeX, also asks for the instantaneous-last-scattering limit and its interpretation. For with no later scattering, and a matter-era growing mode with constant and , the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect vanishes. Hence
The four terms are the intrinsic emission temperature, the gravitational potential at emission, the observer's potential, and the Doppler CMB anisotropy. The two potentials describe the gravitational redshift; the observer term is independent of direction and is absorbed into the measured temperature monopole. The intrinsic temperature and emission potential form the Sachs-Wolfe combination. On superhorizon scales for adiabatic initial conditions in matter domination, , giving the ordinary Sachs-Wolfe effect . The Doppler sign is positive with the paper's propagation direction ; the viewing direction is .
Along the unperturbed photon path, combine the temperature and gravitational-redshift terms and use :
The integrating factor is , and . Neglecting the exponentially hidden initial boundary term gives the Cosmic microwave background line-of-sight solution
For instantaneous recombination, , and the observer potential contributes only an unobservable monopole. Therefore
The first two terms form the ordinary Sachs-Wolfe effect, the velocity term is the Doppler CMB anisotropy at last scattering, and the integral is the Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect produced by evolving potentials.
Let point from the observer toward the emission point, so the photon propagation direction is and
Along this path . Substituting into the Photon Boltzmann equation with Thomson scattering gives
Because , multiplication by the integrating factor gives
where
Integrating along the ray and using at sufficiently early time yields the Cosmic microwave background line-of-sight solution