Peculiar Velocity, Cosmic Perturbation Theory and the CMB Anisotropy

Abstract

This is a somewhat extended version of the original July 93 report. It is proved that the cosmological density perturbation is associated with a peculiar velocity field. This allows a simple formulation of cosmological perturbation theory, which works entirely with quasi-Newtonian fluid flow equations. As an illustration, the large scale cosmic microwave background anisotropy (Sachs-Wolfe effect) is calculated without any reference to the metric perturbation. In addition, assuming the usual adiabatic initial condition on the density perturbation, we show that the dipole of the anisotropy measures our peculiar velocity relative to the average peculiar velocity within the last scattering surface of the microwave background, thus defining its frame of reference.