Propagation of the burst of radiation in expanding and recombining Universe: Thomson scattering

Within the framework of a flat cosmological model a propagation of an instantaneous burst of nonpolarized isotropic radiation is considered from the moment of its beginning at some initial redshift z0 to the moment of its registration now (at z=0). Thomson (Rayleigh) scattering by free electrons is considered as the only source of opacity. Spatial distributions of the mean (over directions) radiation intensity are calculated as well as angular distributions of radiation intensity and polarization at some different distances from the center of the burst. It is shown that for redshifts z0 large enough (z0 > 1400) the profile of the mean intensity normalized to the total number of photons emitted during the burst weakly depends on initial conditions (say the moment z0 of the burst, the width and shape of initial radiation distribution in space). As regards angular distributions of intensity and polarization they turn to be rather narrow (3 - 5 arcmin) while polarization can reach 70%. On the average an expected polarization can be about 15%.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Dynamics of Primordial Hydrogen Recombination with Allowance for a Recoil for Scattering in the Ly-alpha Line

It is shown that taking into account a recoil for radiation scattering in the Ly-alpha line can lead to a noticable acceleration of primordial hydrogen recombination. Thus for LambdaCDM model a decrease of ionization degree exceeds 1% for redshifts z in a range 800 - 1050 achieving approximately 1.3% at z=900. Corresponding corrections to the cosmic microwave background power spectra can achieve 1.1% for TT spectra and 1.7% for EE ones. Radiative transfer in these calculations was treated in a quasistationary approximation. Numerical solutions are also obtained in diffusion approximation for a nonstationary problem of Ly-alpha line radiative transfer under partial frequency redistribution with a recoil. An evolution of a local line profile is traced to as well as an evolution of a relative number of uncompensated transitions from 2p state down to 1s one. It is shown that taking into account nonstationarity of Ly-alpha line radiative transfer can lead to an additional acceleration of primordial hydrogen recombination.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in Astronomy Letter