Let . Rotations around and the vanishing trace imply that the angular integral in the scalar neutrino anisotropic stress has the form . Contract with and use . By the Orthogonality of Legendre polynomials,
Only the quadrupole in the neutrino Boltzmann hierarchy contributes. Its phase factor is , so the supplied stress definition becomes
Comparing with the chosen normalization gives
The sign and factor here follow jointly from the stress convention and the unweighted Legendre polynomial coefficients; they should not be transferred unchanged to a differently normalized hierarchy.
For one Fourier mode, put . The collisionless equation becomes
Use the unweighted Legendre polynomial expansion specified in the paper: . The Legendre polynomial recurrence relation says
The coefficient of in receives contributions from and . Dividing by gives respectively and . The metric sources are and , the latter becoming after division by . Hence the neutrino Boltzmann hierarchy is
The lower-neighbour term is absent for . The low moments are
These coefficients depend on the expansion convention. In the convention with a factor, the temperature multipoles are ; using those multipoles without converting them would give incorrect factors in the scalar neutrino anisotropic stress.