Neutrino tensor free-streaming kernel 2026-10-05
Projecting free-streaming neutrinos onto the tensor spherical harmonic givesHere is a Spherical Bessel function. The continuous value at zero follows by integrating , whose integral is .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 312 4 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
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 solutionApply 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 givesA direction-independent potential commutes with the angular average. Thus the incoming photon monopole plus the potential at the screen isSubstitution givesThis 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 isIf , 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. ConsequentlyThese 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.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 iii Paper 312 4 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Write and . Since , the line-of-sight solution isThe angular pattern is proportional to . Projecting onto this spherical harmonic multiplies its coefficient bywhere and is a Spherical Bessel function. Thus the quadrupole isUse the isotropic tensor integralBecause is symmetric and trace-free, contracting this with gives . Substitution into the paper's signed neutrino tensor anisotropic stress therefore givesThe neutrino tensor free-streaming kernel is finite at the origin, with .