Perturbation Initial Conditions using a matrix formulation

Lunch seminar
Wednesday 8 October
Michael Doran (Dartmouth)

Abstract:
We sketch the derivation of initial conditons for gauge invariant perturbations of matter, radiation and dark energy. By re-formulating the evolution equation in matrix notation, we can use the familiar language of eigenvectors and eigenvalues. The matrix method greatly simplifies finding initial conditions. Furthermore, the degeneracy of the dominant eigenvalue implies that there is no additional important mode from scalar quintessence.