Generation of Magnetic Field in the Pre-recombination Era

Abstract

We study the possibility of generating magnetic fields during the evolution of electron, proton, and photon plasma in the pre-recombination era. We show that a small magnetic field can be generated in the second order of perturbation theory for scalar modes with adiabatic initial conditions. The amplitude of the field is $\la 10^{-30} \rm G$ at the present epoch for scales from sub-kpc to $\ga 100 \rm Mpc$.