Adiabatic initial conditions Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-11-05
Adiabatic initial conditions perturb all relevant local physical quantities along the same background time trajectory. For quantities with nonzero background time derivatives, their perturbations satisfy . For separately conserved barotropic fluids, cosmological energy conservation then givesFor example, pressureless matter and radiation in cosmology obey . Their relative particle-number ratio is unperturbed at leading order.
The density condition tests relative entropy between components. In a general nonbarotropic component it does not by itself eliminate intrinsic entropy, measured by . The stronger statement that every physical variable follows the same time shift includes the pressure and any independent field-velocity data. A single scalar species alone does not make the density-ratio test sufficient, since that test is then vacuous.
For vanishing total non-adiabatic pressure perturbation and negligible regular gradient terms, uniform-density curvature is conserved on superhorizon scales.[ref]
A new approach to the evolution of cosmological perturbations on large scales by David Wands and others. Equations (18)–(19), (29), and Section V.A
Relating this to conserved comoving curvature perturbation also requires the appropriate regular adiabatic mode; a non-attractor phase such as ultra-slow-roll inflation needs separate analysis. The ordinary growing adiabatic photon mode selects coherent acoustic phases, explaining the adiabatic acoustic-peak spacing. Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 312 1 iv Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
For an attractor with one adiabatic clock and a regular Bunch-Davies vacuum, a long comoving curvature perturbation acts at leading order as a spatial dilation. The single-field inflation squeezed-limit consistency relation therefore fixesFor the local convention , comparison with its squeezed primordial bispectrum givesThe matter-era negative gravitational potential is , so this is also the conventional of part (i). In single-field slow-roll inflation, the spectral tilt is small and the effective local coupling is of slow-roll size, typically of order for a tilt of a few percent. This is a statement about the normalized coupling: the squeezed primordial bispectrum still contains the large long-mode power spectrum.
Formally putting this small coupling into the local template of part (ii) predicts only a tiny correction on accessible scales, rather than an order-unity local signal. For a physical halo abundance there is a stronger qualification. The consistency-relation modulation at fixed coordinate wavelength is a dilation; the coordinate size of a fixed physical halo must be dilated too. Those responses cancel. This is the absence of primordial scale-dependent halo bias in single-clock inflation: the leading consistency-relation term produces no physical halo bias. The first physical long-mode response contains two spatial derivatives, so dividing it by does not produce the local-template enhancement. Thus the leading primordial large-scale galaxy power spectrum remains the Gaussian-bias result, apart from ordinary transfer, bias, and projection effects.
The cancellation can be seen with a top-hat filter. At fixed local time, a constant long curvature rescales physical lengths by , so the coordinate radius of a fixed physical halo is , and the coordinate short density contrast is . Changing variables givesThus the smoothed field and its variance at fixed physical mass are unchanged by the constant long mode.
The assumptions matter: a non-attractor such as ultra-slow-roll inflation, additional fluctuating fields, or an excited initial state need not obey this squeezed-limit conclusion. A sizable physical local modulation would test the stated single-clock attractor assumptions, rather than every possible one-field model.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2024 iii Paper 312 2 ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The second Friedmann equation gives the first Hubble slow-roll parameterBecause ,ThusAs , the kinetic energy decays as and the constant dominates. Hence approaches a constant,This non-attractor background is ultra-slow-roll inflation.