More on crinkles in the last scattering surface

Abstract

Inhomogeneous recombination can give rise to perturbations in the electron number density which can be a factor of five larger than the perturbations in baryon density. We do a thorough analysis of the second order anisotropies generated in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) due to perturbations in the electron number density. We show that solving the second order Boltzmann equation for photons is equivalent to solving the first + second order Boltzmann equations and then taking the second order part of the solution. We find the approximate solution to the photon Boltzmann hierarchy in l modes and show that the contributions from inhomogeneous recombination to the second order monopole, dipole and quadrupole are numerically small. We also point out that perturbing the electron number density in the first order tight coupling and damping solutions for the monopole, dipole and quadrupole is not equivalent to solving the second order Boltzmann equations for inhomogeneous recombination. Finally we confirm our result in a previous paper that inhomogeneous recombination gives rise to a local type non-Gaussianity parameter f_{NL}~ -1. The signal to noise for the detection of the temperature bispectrum generated by inhomogeneous recombination is ~ 1 for an ideal full sky experiment measuring modes up to l_{max}=2500.

Published version

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• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Planck 2013 Results. XXIV. Constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity
• Hunting for Primordial Non-Gaussianity in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• CMB at 2x2 order: the dissipation of primordial acoustic waves and the observable part of the associated energy release
• Planck 2018 results. IX. Constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity
• The cosmic microwave background bispectrum from the non-linear evolution of the cosmological perturbations
• Non-Gaussianity and the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies
• The CMB bispectrum in the squeezed limit
• The CMB bispectrum from recombination
• The full squeezed CMB bispectrum from inflation
• The full CMB temperature bispectrum from single-field inflation
• Perturbed Recombination from Dark Matter Annihilation
• Perturbed recombination from inhomogeneous photon injection and application to accreting primordial black holes
• CMB temperature trispectrum from accreting primordial black holes
• E and B modes of the CMB y-type distortions: polarised kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect from the reionisation and post-reionisation eras