Acoustic peaks in the CMB a matter of standard causal boundary conditions on primordial den.pdf

a r X i v : g r - q c / 0 5 0 4 1 2 4 v 1 2 5 A p r 2 0 0 5 – Acoustic peaks in the CMB: a matter of standard causal boundary conditions on primordial density anisotropies David H. Oaknin Department of Physics, Technion, Haifa, 32000, Israel. e-mail: doaknin@physics.technion.ac.il The pattern of acoustic peaks in the sub-horizon power spectrum of primordial density anisotropies at recombination can be naturally understood in the framework of standard Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmology (without inflation) as a conse- quence of the boundary conditions imposed by the causal horizon on the statistical two-points correlation functions: the sub-horizon spectrum is discrete (harmonic), with comoving modes located at kn = n π H?1eq , n = 1, 2, ..., because the causally con- nected patch of the universe at recombination is compact, with comoving radius H?1eq . The results presented in this paper complement those presented in [1], where it was shown that the scale invariance of the primordial density anisotropies over co- moving scales of cosmological size is also a consequence of the boundary conditions imposed by causality. Together these results lay an appealing theoretical alternative to the inflationary paradigm as the ultimate answer for the origin of cosmological structures in standard cosmology. The extremely uniform blackbody radiation at T ～ 2.7 K that permeates the whole visible universe [2] is a relic signature of the hotter and denser earlier stage at Teq ～ 3 × 10 3 K when free electrons and protons recombined into atomic hydrogen and the electromagnetic radiation decoupled from the thermal cosmic plasma [3]. The anisotropies observed over the sky ?T (θ,φ) T ～ 10 ?5 in the local temperature of this blackbody radiation [4], known commonly as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), are the imprint left by tiny random primordial density fluctuations in the, otherwise, homogeneous and isotropic cosmic plasma at the instant of recombination. Precision measureme