Kavli Affiliate: Tom Abel
| First 5 Authors: Karsten Jedamzik, Tom Abel, , ,
| Summary:
Primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) may explain observations of magnetic fields
on extragalactic scales. They are most cleanly constrained by observations of
details of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) Their effects on
cosmic recombination may even be at the heart of the resolution of the Hubble
tension. We present an in-detail analysis of the effects of PMFs on cosmic
recombination taking into account of all so far known relevant physical
processes. To this end we extend the public magneto-hydrodynamic code ENZO with
a new cosmic recombination routine, Monte-Carlo simulations of Lyman-$alpha$
photon transport, and a Compton drag term in the baryon momentum equation. The
resulting code allows us to predict the impact of PMFs on the cosmic ionization
history and the clumping of baryons during cosmic recombination. We study the
specific case of non-helical PMFs with a Batchelor spectrum. Our results
identify the importance of mixing of Lyman-$alpha$ photons between overdense-
and underdense- regions for small PMF strength. This mixing shows an attractor
to the fully mixed case and speeds up recombination beyond the speed-up due to
clumping. It leads to enhanced Silk damping which is strongly constrained by
CMB observations. We also show that the increase in the ionization fraction at
low redshift by hydrodynamic baryon heating due to PMF dissipation is
completely compensated by the faster recombination from baryon clumping. We
describe and explain the significant differences of these 3D simulations over
earlier three-zone models.
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