International Journal of Modern Physics D, Vol. 9, No.

5 (2000) 575579 c World Scientic Publishing Company

EFFECT OF THE THERMAL PRESSURE ON THE DYNAMICAL EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE

TONG-JIE ZHANG Department of Astronomy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

Received 25 November 1999 Communicated by A. Dolgov

While the pressureless dust assumption has been widely adopted in the standard model of cosmology, a quantitative estimate of the actual contribution of thermal pressure of the baryonic matter and the hot/cold dark matter to the dynamical evolution of the Universe has not yet been made in literature. In this paper we provide a simple scenario of how the solution, e.g. the age of the Universe, is aected by the inclusion of the thermal pressure of the baryon and dark matter particles.

1. Introduction In the standard model of cosmology, the thermal pressure of cosmic matter is presumably taken to be zero. Consequently, the Universe is usually envisioned as a reservoir of the pressureless dust particles.1 Yet, the rationality of this conventional scenario has not been quantitatively justied. In fact, it remains to be unclear as to how signicant the thermal pressure of the (non)relativistic matter would be at dierent cosmic epoch. In particular, it deserves to be understood the contribution of the hot/cold dark matter particles to the thermal pressure in addition to that of the baryonic matter because the former may play a dominant role in the dynamical evolution of the Universe. The possible eect of thermal pressure of the cosmic matter was recalled once in a while in history (e.g. Peebles2 ), but whether the eect can predict any observational feature or motivate any theoretical interest are still poorly known. In this paper, we present a quantitative yet simple analysis of the thermal pressure contributions to the dynamical solution of the Universe in a very conventional way. As an example, we demonstrate the eect of the thermal pressure by baryons, hot and cold dark matter particles on the evaluation of the age of the Universe.

E-mail:

tjzhang@email.bnu.edu.cn 575

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2. The Age of the Universe 2.1. The Conventional Model: pM = 0 According to Einsteins general relativity, the equations which govern the homogeneous and isotropic Universe are written in the following form 8G a2 k = + 2, a2 3 3 a (1)

a 4G = ( + 3p) + , (2) a 3 3 where a is the Universe expansion factor, k determines the spatial curvature of the Universe and is the cosmological constant. The pressure p and density satisfy the equation of state, p = p(). In the absence of thermal pressure of matter, the state of equations can be expressed as: p = where is independent of time or redshift. Combining Eqs. (1) and (2) with p = yields d da = 3(1 + ) . a (3)

This gives a3(1+) where M = 0 and pM = 0 for pressureless dust matter, R = 1/3 for radiation, and = 1 for the cosmological constant. Therefore, the matter density, the radiation density and the vacuum energy density (or the cosmological constant) evolve, respectively, as M a3 ; R a4 ; = C . (4)

Introducing the cosmological density parameters at the present epoch such that = 8G 2 0 ; 3H0 = 2 ; 3H0 k = k 2 , a2 H0 (5)

and dening the present Hubble constant H0 (a/a)0 , we have + + k = 1 , where = M + R . Alternatively, from Eq. (1) we get
2 H 2 = H0 E 2 (z) ,

(6)

(7)

where E(z) = M (1 + z)3 + R (1 + z)4 + + k (1 + z)2 . (8)

Meanwhile, Eq. (7) can be written to be H0 dt = da . aE(z) (9)

The lookback time from the present epoch is thus

1 t0 tz = H0 0 z

(1 + z)1 E(z)1 dz .

(10)

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Finally, the age of the Universe reads

1 t0 = H0 0

(1 + z)1 E(z)1 dz .

(11)

2.2. The case of pressure pM = 0 Unlike for the case of pressureless particles pM = 0, in the equation of state p = will no longer be a constant but is dependent on the redshift z. If we still assume the matter of the Universe to be ideal-gas, the equation of state becomes pM = nM kTM = BM DM kB TBM + kB TDM B mH MD fD fB kB TBM + kB TDM , B mH MD (12)

= M

where fB = BM /M , fD = DM /M , mH is the mass of hydrogen atom, B and MD are the mean molecular weight of the gas and the mass of dark matter particles, respectively. As described above, the general form of equation of state still reads as p = . So, we can write M = pM kB = 2 2 M c c fD fB TBM + TDM . B mH MD (13)

Note that the above expression contains a term c2 because the natural unit c = 1 has been adopted in the original equation of state p = . After matter decouples, the evolution of temperature follows TM = TM0 (1 + z)2 where TM0 is the temperature at present epoch, and z is the redshift. Due to the dierent decoupling epoch between baryonic matter and dark matter, there are dierent values of TM0 for the baryon and dark matter particles. In particular, the dierent species of dark matter particles correspond to the dierent decoupling temperatures Tdec and the corresponding present temperatures TM0 . So, Eq. (13) gives M = M0 (1 + z)2 , where M0 = kB c2 fB fD TBM0 + TDM0 . B mH MD (15) (14)

Substituting Eq. (14) into Eq. (3), we get M (z) = M0 (1 + z)3 EM (z) , (16)

where EM (z) = exp[3M0 (2z + z 2 )/2]. Apparently, EM (0) = 1 and M (0) = M0 . With the help of Eq. (16), we can rewrite Eq. (8) as E(z) = M (1 + z)3 EM (z) + R (1 + z)4 + + k (1 + z)2 . (17)

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The present value of E(z) can be estimated from EM (0) = 1: E 2 (0) = M EM (0) + R + + k = M + R + + k = 1 , which is the same as the result for pM = 0. 2.3. Estimate of M0 The decoupling time for the baryonic matter occurred at (1 + zdec ) 1100. We can estimate the temperature of the matter component at present epoch through TBM0 = TR0 /(1 + zdec) 2.7 K/1100 0.00245 K, where TR0 is the present temperature of the cosmic background radiation. For the hot dark matter particles (HDM), the rest mass is of order of magnitude M 102 eV, corresponding to a decoupling temperature of Tdec (1 3) Mev. We adopt MHDM = 10 eV and = Tdec (HDM ) = 1 Mev for our illustration below. The decoupling redshift is thus 1 + zdec(HDM) = Tdec(HDM)/TR0 and the present temperature of HDM is TDM0 = TR0 /(1 + zdec(HDM)) = (2.7K)2 /1 Mev 6.28 1010 K. Using mP = 1.67 1024 g, B = 1.21, fB 0.17 and fD 0.8, we nally obtain M0 4.56 1015 , which is indeed extremely small! 3. Discussion and Conclusions Due to the fact that R h2 105 at present-day3, where h=H0 /100 kms1 Mpc1 , the role of radiation in the evolution of the Universe can be neglected. So, we roughly have M + + k = 1. It is not dicult to show that an analytic resolution can be found for Eq. (11) in some special cases45 of = 0 and k = 0 without the pressure of matter. In general, Eq. (11) can only be solved numerically. As motivated by ination, space curvature is negligibly small. For this reason, we take k = 0, thus M + = 1 which is a at cosmological model. The free parameter is M or . Given a value of M , we can integrate Eq. (11) numerically for the cases with and without matter pressure pM respectively. The results reveal that the age of the Universe t0 varies with the matter density parameter M : t0 drops remarkably with the increase of M from 0 to 2 for at models. It is unlikely that we can observe the dierence between the pM = 0 model and the one for pM = 0. As for the cold dark matter model (CDM), it satises Tdec (CDM) MCDM /19 52 Mev and MCDM 1 Gev. Taking MCDM = 1 Gev as an example, we nd that the fraction of CDM in M0 is negligibly small as compared with that of HDM. In addition, for a at model described above, k = 0 and R = 0, Eq. (17) reduces to E(z) = M (1 + z)3 EM (z) + 1 M . (19) (18)

Provided that = 0 but k = 0, namely, a open or close model, Eq. (17) will take another form E(z) = M (1 + z)3 EM (z) + (1 M )(1 + z)2 . (20)

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A comparison of Eqs. (19) and (20) reveals that the eect of the term EM (z) in the open or close model, which characterizes the thermal pressure of matter, is less than the one in a at model, because the term (1 M ) in Eq. (20) is magnied by a factor of (1 + z)2 . References
1. S. Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology (Wiley, New York, 1972). 2. P. J. E. Peebles, Principles of Physical Cosmology (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993). 3. T. Padmanabhan, Structure Formation in the Universe (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993). 4. S. M. Carroll, W. H. Press and E. L. Turner, Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 30, 499 (1992). 5. A. Sandage, Astrophys. J. 133, 355 (1961).