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The cosmologist Martin White analyzed small-scale Cosmic microwave background anisotropy with Wayne Hu. Their damping-tail calculation separated Silk damping and reionization effects from acoustic modulation and gravitational enhancement, so different physical processes could be compared with observed angular structure.^[ref]

This is an inference strategy: suppressed small-scale power need not have a single physical cause. The authors' byline identifies White's University of Chicago affiliation for this work.

Wayne Hu developed physical descriptions of Cosmic microwave background anisotropy, including the 1997 damping-tail analysis with Martin White. Their work calibrated photon-diffusion and reionization damping while separating model-dependent changes in acoustic structure.^[ref]

Photon diffusion smooths fluctuations on scales photons traverse before decoupling. Its angular imprint therefore connects microscopic scattering and the expansion history to the measured small-scale Cosmic microwave background anisotropy.