Evolution of Small Scale Cosmological Baryon Perturbations and Matter Transfer Functions

Abstract

The evolution of small scale cosmological perturbations is carefully re-examined. Through the interaction with photons via electrons, baryon perturbations show interesting behavior in some physical scales. Characteristic features of the evolution of baryon density fluctuations are discussed. In CDM models, it is found a power-law growing phase of the small-scale baryon density fluctuations, which is characterized by the terminal velocity, after the diffusion (Silk) damping and before the decoupling epoch. Then, a transfer function for total matter density fluctuations is studied by taking into account those physical processes. An analytic transfer function is presented, which is applicable for the entire range up to a solar mass scale in the high$-z$ universe, and it is suitable also to the high baryon fraction models.