Relaxation versus collision times in the cosmological radiative era
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
2014-11-17 v1 Astrophysics
Statistical Mechanics
Plasma Physics
Abstract
We consider the Lema\^{\i}tre-Tolman-Bondi metric with an inhomogeneous viscous fluid source satisfying the equation of state of an interactive mixture of radiation and matter. Assuming conditions prior to the decoupling era, we apply Extended Irreversible Thermodynamcs (EIT) to this mixture. Using the full transport equation of EIT we show that the relaxation time of shear viscosity can be several orders of magnitude larger than the Thomson collision time between photons and electrons. A comparison with the ``truncated'' transport equation for these models reveals that the latter cannot describe properly the decoupling of matter and radiation
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0103053,
title = {Relaxation versus collision times in the cosmological radiative era},
author = {Diego Pavon and Roberto A. Sussman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0103053},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
To appear in Classical and Quantum Gravity. Latex with revtex macros. Includes six figures