Non-comoving baryons and cold dark matter in cosmic voids

Abstract

We examine the fully relativistic evolution of cosmic voids constituted by baryons and cold dark matter (CDM), represented by two non-comoving dust sources in a $\Lambda$CDM background. For this purpose, we consider numerical solutions of Einstein's field equations in a fluid-flow representation adapted to spherical symmetry and multiple components. We present a simple example that explores the frame-dependence of the local expansion and the Hubble flow for this mixture of two dusts, revealing that the relative velocity between the sources yields a significantly different evolution in comparison with that of the two sources in a common 4-velocity (which reduces to a Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi model). In particular, significant modifications arise for the density contrast depth and void size, as well as in the amplitude of the surrounding over-densities. We show that an adequate model of a frame-dependent evolution that incorporates initial conditions from peculiar velocities and large-scale density contrast observations may contribute to understand the discrepancy between the local value of $H_0$ and that inferred from the CMB.

Discussion of the evolution of baryon-CDM relative velocity added. Other minor but important corrections were incorporated. Version accepted for publication in EPJC