Abstract
The analysis of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has become an extremely valuable tool for cosmology. There is even hope that planned CMB anisotropy experiments may revolutionize cosmology. Together with determinations of the CMB spectrum, they represent the first precise cosmological measurements. The value of CMB anisotropies lies in large part in the simplicity of the theoretical analysis. Fluctuations in the CMB can be determined almost fully within linear cosmological perturbation theory and are not severely influenced by complicated nonlinear physics. In this contribution the different physical processes causing or influencing anisotropies in the CMB are discussed: the geometry perturbations at and after last scattering, the acoustic oscillations in the baryon-photon plasma prior to recombination, and the diffusion damping during the process of recombination. The perturbations due to the fluctuating gravitational field, the so-called Sachs-Wolfe contribution, is described in a very general form using the Weyl tensor of the perturbed geometry.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bardeen, J. (1980).Physical Review D,22, 1882.
Choquet-Bruhat, Y., De Witt-Morette, C., and Dillard-Bleick, M. (1982).Analysis, Manifolds and Physics, North-Holland, Amsterdam.
Crittenden, R. G., and Turok N. (1995).Physical Review Letters,75, 2642.
Durrer, R. (1994).Fundamental of Cosmic Physics,15, 209.
Durrer, R., and Straumann, N. (1988).Helvetica Physica Acta,61, 1027.
Durrer, R., and Zhou, Z. H., (1996).Physical Review D,53, 5394.
Durrer, R., Gangui, A., and Sakellariadou, M. (1996).Physical Review Letters,76, 579.
Ellis, G. (1971). InVarenna Summer School on General Relativity and Cosmology XLVII Corso, Academic Press, New York.
Harrison, E. (1970).Physical Review D,1, 2726 (1970); Zel'dovich, Ya. B. (1972).Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,160, P1.
Hu, W., and Sugiyama, N. (1995a).Physical Review D,51, 2599.
Hu, W., and Sugiyama, N. (1996).Astrophys. J. 471, 542.
Hu, W., Sugiyama, N., and Sik, J. (1997).Nature 386, 37.
Kibble, T. (1980).Physics Reports,67, 183.
Kodama, H., and Sasaki, M. (1980).Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement,78.
Magueijo, J. C. R. (1992).Physical Review D,46, 3360.
Mukhanov, V. F., Bradenberger, R. H., and Feldmann, H. A. (1991).Physics Reports,215, 203.
Sachs, R. K. and Wolfe, A. M. (1967).Astrophysical Journal,147, 73.
Silk, J. (1968).Astrophysical Journal,151, 459.
Smoot, G. F.,et al. (1992).Astrophysical Journal,396, L1.
Smoot, G., and Scott, D. (1994). In L. Montanetet al., Physical Review D,50, 1173 (1994) [1996 upgrade available at URL: http://pdg.lbl.gov; or astro-ph/9603157].
Stewart, J. M. (1971). InNon-Equilibrium Relativistic Kinetic Theory, J. Ehlers, K. Hepp, and H. A. Wiedenmüller, eds., Springer, Berlin.
Stewart, J. M., and Walker, M. (1974).Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A,341, 49.
Wright, E. L.,et al. (1992).Astrophysical Journal,396, L13.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Durrer, R. Anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background: Theoretical foundations. Int J Theor Phys 36, 2469–2487 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02768937
Received:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02768937