Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 310 1 b ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
After thermal decoupling in cosmology, the collisionless relativistic species has . The still-coupled plasma separately conserves entropy, so remains constant. At decoupling , while at late times the coupled plasma contains only the two photon polarizations. Therefore the temperature of a decoupled relativistic relic isHere is understood as the effective entropy degrees of freedom in the plasma that remains coupled after decouples.