Cosmological Structure Formation Creates Large-Scale Magnetic Fields
arXiv:astro-ph/0604526 · doi:10.1086/507785
Abstract
This paper examines the generation of seed magnetic fields due to the growth of cosmological perturbations. In the radiation era, different rates of scattering from photons induce local differences in the ion and electron density and velocity fields. The currents due to the relative motion of these fluids generate magnetic fields on all cosmological scales, peaking at a magnitude of ~ 10^{-24} Gauss at the epoch of recombination. Magnetic fields generated in this manner provide a promising candidate for the seeds of magnetic fields presently observed on galactic and extra-galactic scales.
9 pages, 3 figures, important error corrected: with the correction, overall field strengths are 10^{-24} Gauss, discussion of other works in the literature expanded, and references added
References in corpus (4)
- CMB anisotropies from primordial inhomogeneous magnetic fields
- Cosmological Magnetic Field: a fossil of density perturbations in the early universe
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- Constraints on the Evolution of the Primordial Magnetic Field from the Small-Scale Cosmic Microwave Background Angular Anisotropy
Cited by in corpus (10)
- Large-scale magnetic fields in the inflationary universe
- Inflation-Produced Magnetic Fields in Nonlinear Electrodynamics
- Inflation-Produced Magnetic Fields in R^n F^2 and I F^2 models
- Cosmological magnetic fields from nonlinear effects
- Primordial helium recombination III: Thomson scattering, isotope shifts, and cumulative results
- Large-scale magnetic fields from inflation due to Chern-Simons-like effective interaction
- The interrelation between the generation of large-scale electric fields and that of large-scale magnetic fields during inflation
- Primordial magnetic fields from second-order cosmological perturbations: Tight coupling approximation
- Property of the spectrum of large-scale magnetic fields from inflation
- Electromagnetic Properties of the Early Universe