Microwave Background Signals from Tangled Magnetic Fields
Abstract
An inhomogeneous cosmological magnetic field will create Alfven-wave modes that induce a small rotational velocity perturbation on the last scattering surface of the microwave background radiation. The Alfven-wave mode survives Silk damping on much smaller scales than the compressional modes. This, in combination with its rotational nature, ensures that there will be no sharp cut-off in anisotropy on arc-minute scales. We estimate that a magnetic field which redshifts to a present value of Gauss produces temperature anisotropies at the 10 micro Kelvin level at and below 10 arc-min scales. A tangled magnetic field, which is large enough to influence the formation of large scale structure is therefore potentially detectable by future observations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9803261,
title = {Microwave Background Signals from Tangled Magnetic Fields},
author = {Kandaswamy Subramanian and John D. Barrow},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9803261},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
5 pages, Revtex, no figures