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# Causal perturbation theory in general FRW cosmologies II: superhorizon behaviour and initial conditions

## I Introduction

The standard flat universe inflationary plus dark energy paradigm appears to be remarkable accord with recent CMB experiments . Nevertheless, the confrontation with observation remains indecisive, not only because of the significant experimental uncertainties, but also because good quantitative accuracy has not yet been achieved for competing paradigms such as actively sourced theories, which have so far only been extensively studied for cosmic defects in flat FRW ($`K=0`$) backgrounds . Moreover, even for flat universes, a subsidiary role for defect networks complementing the inflationary power spectrum cannot be excluded . The possibilty of searching for distinct defect signatures in the CMB, such as nonGaussianity  or in the polarisation spectra  may go some way toward resolving these remaining uncertainties. However, in order to have confidence in cosmological parameter estimation with a purely inflationary paradigm, it will be necessary to constrain the alternative models, including both ‘primordial’ and ‘active’ perturbation sources, as well as the effects of vector and tensor modes and $`K0`$ backgrounds. Here the combination of intrinsic curvature and defect sources is particularly interesting, motivating a study of the superhorizon behaviour and the choice of consistent initial conditions for such perturbations. Of particular interest is the possibility of a testable signature of superhorizon fall-off in ‘causal’ or ‘active’ models in the CMB polarisation power spectrum.

The Cauchy problem for cosmological perturbations over a $`K=0`$ FRW background has been extensively discussed in the literature. Using energy-momentum conservation, and assuming that the early universe was purely homogeneous and isotropic, one can show  that the power spectrum of the stresses should be that of white noise ($`k^0`$), while that of the density should be suppressed as $`k^4`$, for wavelengths much larger than the horizon; here, $`k`$ is the comoving wavenumber so this the superhorizon condition is $`kaH`$ where $`H=\dot{a}/a`$ and $`a`$ is the scale factor. Assuming that matter undergoes random displacements of length $`d_c`$ at each point in space, while satisfying energy-momentum conservation, one can estimate that the density power spectrum turns over to $`k^4`$ behaviour at $`k_c2d_c^1`$ . This result may be used  to simplify the calculations to determine consistent initial conditions for numerical analyses. One assumes that all perturbations of relevance today come from far outside the initial horizon ($`k\tau _\mathrm{i}1`$) so that one may argue that the strong $`k^4`$ suppression allows us to set all these variables to zero initially.

For the general $`K0`$ FRW cosmologies, these issues remain unaddressed, although there do exist several analyses of the effect of curvature on the CMB assuming primordial inflationary perturbations described by power law ansatzes. Some examples include: the generalisation of the Sachs-Wolfe effect to include curvature effects ; refs.  and  treat the open universe case, respectively using a gauge invariant and a synchronous gauge formalism — see also ref.  — and ref.  investigated the closed universe case, again using a gauge invariant approach. However, the literature does not contain (to our knowledge) any direct analysis of the superhorizon effects of energy-momentum conservation on active and causal seed sources in intrinsically curved FRW spacetimes.

In this paper we shall therefore describe the manner in which causality and energy-momentum conservation constrain the superhorizon behaviour of the perturbation variables in the general FRW spacetime, in curvilinear coordinates. As discussed in our previous paper — ref.  — we may describe the symmetry properties and stress energy conservation laws of these spacetimes in two equivalent languages corresponding to integral and differential conservation laws. The language of conserved vector densities $`\widehat{I}^\mu `$ (c.f. Katz et al) uses the conformal geometry of the background spacetime to naturally construct integral constraint equations, representing strong conservation laws defined over some region of a spacelike hypersurface. These reduce to Noether conservation laws when constructed using the Killing geometry of the background.

Traschen  obtained such integral constraints using as a background manifold a maximally symmetric de Sitter spacetime in quasi–Minkowskian coordinates, and these were related to the vector densities $`\widehat{I}_\xi ^\mu `$ by Dereulle et al. However, in order to make use of these integral constraints, we need to know their behaviour on the boundary of the integration volume. In the case of bounded (or “local”) perturbations, the boundary terms are assumed to vanish, that is, these previous analyses consider perturbations whose stress energy vanishes beyond the horizon. This is a stronger assumption than required by the physics, since only the two-point correlators between these quantities have to vanish in order to satisfy causality. In other words, a physical assumption has been made that is perhaps better suited to the analysis of an explosive event rather than more general causal perturbations, such as those seeded by topological defects, which may persist beyond the horizon (e.g. cosmic strings). Moreover, the choice of background relative to which energy-momentum is formally defined is that of a de Sitter universe, rather than the FRW background convenient for most simulations.

Hence, we turn to the equivalent language of energy-momentum pseudo-tensors , outlined in §II. Again, the relative simplicity of the flat space case is complicated by the introduction of curvature. In §III A we define the two–point correlator, and discuss causality, while the transformed correlator (with respect to the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian) is described in §III B. The effect of intrinsic curvature upon the horizon scale is dealt with in §IV A; and in §IV B we obtain results for a general FRW spacetime analogous to the white noise power spectrum of two arbitrary functions in flat space. Then, in §V, we consider in more detail the superhorizon behaviour of the pseudo-energy. This not only yields the familiar $`k^4`$ behaviour for the isotropic ($`00`$-)mode on superhorizon scales for $`K=0`$, but is also well suited to study the $`K0`$ case. We regain the flat space results in the local limit and discuss the effects of intrinsic curvature on the isotropic mode in a Helmholtz decomposition of the density perturbation associated with causal sources, for both open and closed cosmologies. In §VI we comment on the implications of these results for the choice of consistent initial conditions. We work in the synchronous gauge because of its ubiquity in numerical simulations and the greater physical transparency offered by this gauge choice.

## II Energy-momentum conservation

We shall consider metric perturbations $`h_{\mu \nu }`$ about a general FRW spacetime

$`ds^2=a^2(\gamma _{\mu \nu }+h_{\mu \nu })dx^\mu dx^\nu ,`$ (1)
where the comoving background line element in ‘conformal-polar’ coordinates $`(\tau ,\chi ,\varphi ,\theta )`$ is given by

$`\gamma _{\mu \nu }dx^\mu dx^\nu =d\tau ^2+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{|K|}}\left[d\chi ^2+\mathrm{sin}_K^2\chi \left(d\theta ^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi ^2\right)\right],`$ (2)
with the function $`\mathrm{sin}_K\chi `$ depending on the spatial curvature $`K`$ as

$`\mathrm{sin}_K\chi =\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{sinh}\chi ,\hfill & K<0,\hfill \\ \chi ,\hfill & K=0,\hfill \\ \mathrm{sin}\chi ,\hfill & K>0.\hfill \end{array}`$ (3)
We shall adopt the synchronous gauge defined by the choice $`h^{0\mu }=0`$, so that the trace is given by $`hh_i^i`$ (with the convention throughout that Greek indices run from 0 to 3 and Latin from 1 to 3).

Here, $`aa(\tau )`$ is the scalefactor, for which we can define the conformal Hubble factor $`=\dot{a}/a`$, with dots denoting derivatives with respect to conformal time $`\tau `$. The evolution of these background quantities is described by the Friedmann equations

$`\kappa a^2\rho =3(H^2+K),\kappa a^2(\rho +3p)=6\dot{H},`$ (4)
where the background tensor $`\overline{T}_{\mu \nu }=(\rho ,p,p,p)`$ includes the dark energy of the universe (or cosmological constant). In an earlier paper, , we have shown that one may use the Bianchi identities to rewrite the Einstein equations $`G_{\mu \nu }R_{\mu \nu }\frac{1}{2}g_{\mu \nu }R=\kappa T_{\mu \nu }`$ (with $`\kappa =8\pi G`$), to obtain a description of the perturbed energy-momentum in terms of a linear tensor

$`\kappa \tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0`$ $`=`$ $`a^2\delta G_{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0+\dot{h}Kh,\kappa \tau _i^0=\delta G_i^0,`$ (5)
$`\kappa \tau _j^i`$ $`=`$ $`\delta G_j^i\left[\dot{h}_j^i\dot{h}\delta _j^i\right].`$ (6)
Note that here we have dropped the deltas in the original definition, understanding that the $`\tau _\nu ^\mu `$ are the perturbed parts of the energy-momentum pseudo-tensor only. We have also separated the perturbed energy-momentum tensor into two parts: the first order part $`\delta T_{\mu \nu }`$ incorporates the stress energy of the radiation fluid, baryonic matter, and cold dark matter, and a contribution $`\mathrm{\Theta }_{\mu \nu }`$ representing the stress tensor of an evolving defect network or some other causal sources. This is assumed to be small (of order $`\delta T_{\mu \nu }`$) and ‘stiff’, that is, its energy and momenta are conserved independently of the rest of the matter and radiation in the universe and to lowest order its evolution is unaffected by the metric perturbations $`h_{\mu \nu }`$.

The components (6) may be simply related to conserved vector densities $`\widehat{I}^\mu `$ obtained by defining energy and momenta with respect to a general FRW background , and therefore represent a locally valid definition of these quantities. The conservation equations for these quantities are

$`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0},0}^0+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}|i}^i=0,\tau _{i,0}^0+\tau _{i|j}^j=0,`$ (7)
where the bar denotes covariant differentiation with respect to the spatial three metric $`\gamma _{ij}`$.

The pseudo-energy $`\tau _0^0`$ is a particularly useful variable for tracking the growth of large-structure which is why we focus on it in this paper. In ref. , we showed that pseudo-energy is proportional to the growing mode of the density perturbation on superhorizon scales whether the universe is dominated by radiation, matter or curvature (see also ). In addition, we briefly discussed the implications of matching conditions at an instantaneous phase transition, with particular emphasis on the choice of consistent initial conditions. However, a more thorough treatment requires that we consider not the perturbations themselves, but rather their correlators.

## III Two-point correlators

### A Two-point correlators and causality

Causality is usually defined in terms of two–point correlation functions, which contain all the information pertinent to Gaussian perturbations . If two random functions $`b_{\mu \nu }`$ and $`d_{\mu \nu }`$ are assumed to be statistically spatially homogeneous and isotropic, then their two point correlation function, $`C_{\mu \nu \sigma \lambda }(𝐲,\tau ,\tau ^{})=b_{\mu \nu }(𝐱,\tau )d_{\sigma \lambda }(𝐱+𝐲,\tau ^{})`$ is a function of time and the ‘radial’ coordinate $`|𝐲|=\chi _y`$ only. The expansion of the universe breaks time translation invariance , so that we may expect dependence on both $`\tau `$ and $`\tau ^{}`$, rather than just on their difference $`\tau \tau ^{}`$. As we are constructing a causal theory of cosmological perturbations, we note that causality imposes the constraint

$`C_{\mu \nu \sigma \lambda }(𝐲,\tau ,\tau ^{})=b_{\mu \nu }(𝐱,\tau )d_{\sigma \lambda }(𝐱+𝐲,\tau ^{})=0,\mathrm{for}\chi _𝐲>\tau +\tau ^{},`$ (8)
so that the two-point correlation function has compact support in $`𝐲`$. Here we may assume without loss of generality that $`\tau >\tau ^{}`$. The fact that the correlator has compact support in turn means that the Fourier transform (in flat space) of the correlator is analytic, as are all the integral transforms with which we shall be concerning ourselves.

In particular, we shall be concerned with the power spectra of various functions, defined as the (Fourier or eigenfunction) coefficient of the equal time two point correlator of the function with its complex conjugate:

$`C_{\mu \nu \mu \nu }(𝐲,\tau ,\tau )=b_{\mu \nu }(𝐱,\tau )b_{\mu \nu }^{}(𝐱+𝐲,\tau )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{V}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐱b_{\mu \nu }(𝐱,\tau )b_{\mu \nu }^{}(𝐱+𝐲,\tau )},`$ (9)
for an arbitrary function $`b_{\mu \nu }`$. Implicit in the final equality of (9) is the “ergodic hypothesis” which states that one may interchange spatial and ensemble averages. In this case the assumption of causality may be expressed as

$`C_{\mu \nu \mu \nu }(𝐲,\tau ,\tau )=0,\mathrm{for}|𝐲|>2\tau =2\chi _H.`$ (10)
In the remainder of this paper we shall frequently suppress the (equal) time dependence of the correlators.

### B The Helmholtz decomposed correlator

For perturbations over a curved FRW background, it is usual to employ the Helmholtz decomposition using the linearly independent eigenfunctions of the Laplacian in polar coordinates . We expand all perturbation quantities in terms of the eigenfunctions $`𝐐^{(m)}`$, which are the scalar ($`m=0`$), vector ($`m=\pm 1`$) and tensor ($`m=\pm 2`$) solutions to the Helmholtz equation

$`^2𝐐^{(m)}\gamma ^{ij}𝐐_{|ij}^{(m)}=k^2𝐐^{(m)},`$ (11)
where the eigentensor has $`|m|`$ suppressed indices (equal to the rank of the perturbation). The explicit representations of these eigenfunctions are given in Appendix A. They are coveniently labeled in terms of a generalised wavenumber $`q`$, and its normalised equivalent $`\beta =q/\sqrt{|K|}`$, related to $`k`$ via

$`q^2=k^2+(|m|+1)K,\beta ^2=\stackrel{~}{k}^2+(|m|+1){\displaystyle \frac{K}{|K|}},`$ (12)
where $`k=\sqrt{|K|}\stackrel{~}{k}`$ and, in flat space, is the Fourier wavenumber.

The spectra for flat and open universes ($`K0`$) are continuous and complete for $`\beta 0`$. For the open universe, this means that the normalised scalar eigenvalues are greater than or equal to unity: $`\stackrel{~}{k}^21`$. For the closed ($`K>0`$) case, the spectrum is discrete because of the existence of periodic boundary conditons. For scalar perturbations, we then have $`\beta =3,4,5,\mathrm{}`$ since the $`\beta =1,2`$ modes are pure gauge . These spectra yield a set of eigenfunctions that is complete, orthonormal, and sufficient to expand all perturbations produced in a finite region.

The literature (see, for instance, refs. ) contains several comments about the open universe bound $`\stackrel{~}{k}^21`$, which could be misinterpreted as implying that perturbations can only be generated below the curvature scale. However, the particle horizon can exceed the curvature scale (see later) which means that, in principle, causal perturbations also can be generated on these large lengthscales. We shall now briefly place these comments in the context of more general eigenfunction decompositions. If one is attempting to describe the stochastic properties of inflationary cosmologies it may be desirable  to include the eigenfunctions associated with $`0\stackrel{~}{k}^2<1`$ and even $`\stackrel{~}{k}^2<0`$, as these may produce effects in the CMB anisotropy patterns — the Grischuk-Zel‘dovich effect . However, this is only necessary if the assumption that the inflaton field is in the vacuum breaks down for some correlation length much larger than the curvature scale and the effect apparently is not measurable in multi-stage inflation models . Moreover, these eigenfunctions may be obtained only by analytic continuation and are not orthonormal, nor are they linearly independent of the $`\stackrel{~}{k}^21`$ modes. For square integrable functions — such as those describing the correlators of causal perturbations — the eigenfunctions labelled by $`\stackrel{~}{k}^21`$ are sufficient.

The $`\stackrel{~}{k}^21`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{k}^2<1`$ modes are often referred to as the ‘subcurvature’ and ‘supercurvature modes’, because their apparent characteristic wavelength ($`1/\stackrel{~}{k}`$) is (respectively) smaller or larger than the comoving curvature scale. However, this nomenclature is misleading: the $`\stackrel{~}{k}^21`$ modes can contain information about effects above the curvature scale, in which case they are very different to their flat space counterparts. These subcurvature modes are not therefore confined to subcurvature scales. They are complete in that they can be used to describe a perturbation on any lengthscale provided it has compact support. Now since the horizon can exceed the curvature scale, this completeness of the $`\stackrel{~}{k}>1`$ modes ensures their sufficiency in describing the correlations of causal perturbations on all lengthscales and at all times.

In an FRW universe, the power spectrum (9) of any scalar function of $`𝐲`$ in terms of the scalar eigenfunctions $`\zeta _{\beta lm}=\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l(\chi _𝐱)Y_{lm}(\theta _𝐱,\varphi _𝐱)`$, where we have decomposed the $`Q^{(0)}`$ using spherical harmonics (see (A39)). This amounts to a transform on the radial coordinate, and a series expansion on the angular part. In particular we wish to expand the power spectrum of the contracted second derivative of the pseudo-stresses $`\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}`$ given in (6) as

$`\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱)\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}(𝐱+𝐲)=\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}}{\displaystyle \underset{l,m}{}}{\displaystyle d\mu (\beta )\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l(\chi _y)Y_{lm}(\theta _y,\varphi _y)\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}_{lm}(\beta )},`$ (13)
where

$`\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}_{lm}(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐲\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l(\chi _y)Y_{lm}^{}(\theta _y,\varphi _y)\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱)\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}(𝐱+𝐲)}.`$ (14)
$`=`$ $`\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱)dV_𝐲\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}(𝐱+𝐲)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l(\chi _y)Y_{lm}^{}(\theta _y,\varphi _y)}.`$ (15)
Here, in the last expression, we have interchanged integration with respect to $`𝐱`$ and $`𝐲`$. In particular, the isotropic $`00`$-mode is given by

$`\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱)\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi ^2}}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐲\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐲)\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱)\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}(𝐱+𝐲)}`$ (17)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi ^2}}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱)dV_y\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}(𝐱+𝐲)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _y)},`$ (18)
where we have substituted $`Y_{00}=1/\sqrt{4\pi }`$.

## IV The transformed horizon scale and white noise

### A The transformed horizon scale

In order to develop intuition as well as to investigate the curved universe superhorizon modes in a Helmholtz decomposition, we need to establish the relationship between $`\beta `$ and the comoving horizon scale $`\chi _H=\tau `$. This is analogous to the flat space result $`k\tau 3\pi /2`$ for a Fourier-Bessel mode with a wavelength of the order of the horizon. We therefore consider the expansion, in terms of eigenfunctions of the Helmholtz equation, of a ‘top hat’ window function that vanishes for $`\chi _𝐱>\chi _H`$, and is given by $`A(𝐱)=A`$ for $`\chi _𝐱\chi _H`$, where we choose the arbitrary constant $`A=1/\sqrt{8}`$. The fact that $`A(𝐱)`$ is defined in terms of the radial coordinate only means that we may set $`l=0`$ in the Helmholtz decomposition to obtain

$`A(𝐱)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi ^2}}}{\displaystyle d\mu (\beta )\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi )A_{00}(\beta )},A_{00}(\beta )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi ^2}}}{\displaystyle dVA(𝐱)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi )}.`$ (20)
Now, using $`\mathrm{d}V=\sqrt{g}\mathrm{d}\chi \mathrm{d}\mathrm{\Omega }`$, $`g=\mathrm{det}(g_{ij})`$, and appealing to (A29), we have

$`A_{00}(\beta )=\{\begin{array}{ccc}\frac{\mathrm{sinh}^2\chi _H}{|K|^{3/2}\sqrt{\beta ^2+1}}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1(\chi _H)\hfill & =\frac{1}{|K|^{3/2}\beta ^2+1}\left[\frac{\mathrm{sin}\beta \chi _H\mathrm{cosh}\chi _H}{\beta }\mathrm{sinh}\chi _H\mathrm{cos}\beta \chi _H\right],\hfill & K<0,\hfill \\ \frac{\chi _H^2}{\beta }\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1\hfill & =\frac{1}{\beta ^2}\left[\frac{\mathrm{sin}\beta \chi _H}{\beta }\chi _H\mathrm{cos}\beta \chi _H\right],\hfill & K=0,\hfill \\ \frac{\mathrm{sin}^2\chi _H}{|K|^{3/2}\sqrt{\beta ^21}}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1(\chi _H)\hfill & =\frac{1}{|K|^{3/2}\beta ^21}\left[\frac{\mathrm{sin}\beta \chi _H\mathrm{cos}\chi _H}{\beta }\mathrm{sin}\chi _H\mathrm{cos}\beta \chi _H\right],\hfill & K>0,\hfill \end{array}`$ (24)
where we have used the explicit expression (A17) for $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1`$ given in Appendix A.

In Fig. 1 we give the transformed ‘top hat’ functions for two values of the horizon $`\chi _H`$, normalised to $`A_{00}=1`$ at $`\beta =0`$. When the horizon is less than or equal to the comoving curvature scale ($`\chi _H1`$), we see that the open universe transform displays very similar behaviour to the flat space Bessel transform. However, on supercurvature scales ($`\chi _H>1`$), the open and flat universe transforms exhibit different behaviour. In particular, we shall choose the first zero of the ‘top hat’ transform as a means of describing the relationship between the horizon scale $`\chi _H`$ and the corresponding value of the transformed variable $`\beta _H`$ (the horizon mode wavenumber). From these we will calculate the value of

$$\alpha \beta _H\chi _H,$$

in order to discuss how this relationship is affected by curvature. The meaning of this relation is that, for a given $`\chi _H`$, those modes with $`\beta \chi _H<\alpha `$ will have characteristic wavelengths larger than the horizon. Of course, for flat space and Cartesian coordinates, this relation is $`\lambda =2\pi /k<2\pi /k_H=\chi _H`$.

The first zeros of $`A_{00}`$ in (24) are given by the solutions to

$`0=\mathrm{tan}\beta \chi _H\beta \times \{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{tanh}\chi _H,\hfill & K<0,\hfill \\ \chi _H,\hfill & K=0,\hfill \\ \mathrm{tan}\chi _H,\hfill & K>0,\hfill \end{array}`$ (28)
which are shown in Fig. 2. Note from (24) that the zeros of (28) will be precisely the zeros of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1`$, assuming $`\chi _H>0`$ (for $`K0`$) and assuming $`0<\chi _H<\pi `$ for the closed ($`K>0`$) case.

The open and flat universes display phenomenologically similar curves. Certainly, as can be seen from Fig. 2, the curves are approximately parallel for $`\chi _H`$ less than (or of the order of) the curvature scale, and that, on these scales, $`\alpha `$ is therefore the same ($`3\pi /2`$) as for flat space: in the local limit, $`\beta \chi =qykr`$ when $`\chi 1`$ ($`y\sqrt{|K|}`$) or when $`|K|0`$. However, for comoving distances much larger than $`\chi _H4`$ the effect of the curvature is to effectively shrink $`\alpha `$ as the curvature induced volume growth becomes significant. The corresponding limit is

$$\alpha \beta _H\chi _H\pi \text{as}\chi _H\mathrm{}(K<0).$$

It is clear from this simple discussion that the characteristic lengthscale of a mode corresponding to the eigenvalue $`k`$ is given by $`1/\beta `$.

For an open universe, on very subhorizon or very superhorizon scales, we may simply take $`\beta \tau 1`$, or $`\beta \tau 1`$ respectively, which is directly analogous to the flat space ($`\stackrel{~}{k}\tau 1`$, $`\stackrel{~}{k}\tau 1`$) limits. However, we note that we must not neglect the precise location of the horizon if we are to describe the effect of the curvature scale upon the behaviour of the eigenfunctions. We shall return to this issue later (see §V), when we observe that curvature effects are significant from as early as $`\tau =\chi _H=0.5`$.

At this point a brief comment on the difference between the Hubble radius and the particle horizon is relevant. In practice, causal perturbations are usually suppressed beyond the Hubble radius because this is roughly the maximum distance over which correlations can be established in one Hubble time. However, in principle, they can exist out to the particle horizon, so we must consider this distinction carefully (e.g. for cosmic strings or, in a more extreme case, for exploding neutrino shells). From the Friedmann equations (4) we see that the comoving Hubble radius $`^1=(1\mathrm{\Omega })^{1/2}<1`$ for an open universe, where the density parameter $`\mathrm{\Omega }=\rho /\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}`$ and $`\rho _{\mathrm{crit}}=3^2/\kappa a^2`$. Clearly, this implies that the Hubble radius is always less than the curvature scale. In inflationary scenarios the Hubble radius is usually the most important quantity and this bound has been used to argue that perturbations with characteristic wavelengths smaller than the curvature scale are well modelled by a flat universe (see, for example, ref. ). However, the open universe particle horizon is obtained from the equation

$`\mathrm{sinh}^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{\chi _H}{2}}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{\Omega }}}1,`$ (29)
so that the proper distance $`d_H=a\chi _H2H^1`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }1`$, where $`H^1`$ is the physical Hubble radius. It is therefore possible for the particle horizon to cross the curvature scale: $`\chi _H>1`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }<0.75`$. Moreover, in order for $`\chi _H>0.5`$ today (when curvature effects become more important — see §V) we require only that $`\mathrm{\Omega }<0.94`$ today. This is well within current observational constraints, and serves to motivate a more complete treatment of the physics around the curvature scale.

For the closed ($`K>0`$) case we see that for the discrete spectrum $`\beta =3,4,\mathrm{}`$, we have $`\alpha 3\pi /2`$, which goes over to the (continuous) flat space result in the limit $`\chi 0`$. We note that the notion of supercurvature and superhorizon perturbations with $`\beta \alpha `$, $`\chi _H1`$ does not have meaning in the closed universe. Indeed, from Fig. 2, we observe that all the $`\beta `$ have zeros for values of $`\chi _H\pi /2`$, at which point the closed universe has its maximal circumference and surface area.

### B The white noise spectrum

We may use causality and the superhorizon limit to establish that the correlators between pseudo-stress must go as a constant on superhorizon scales $`\beta \chi _𝐲\alpha `$. Substituting the small argument series expansion of $`\mathrm{sin}\beta \chi `$, in the exact expression (A13) for $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi )`$, we find that the isotropic ($`l=0`$) mode for the correlator of two arbitrary scalar functions may be written as

$`f(𝐱)g(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(\beta )={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{(1)^n\beta ^{2n}}{(2n+1)!}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐲<f(𝐱)g(𝐱+𝐲)>\times \{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{\chi _𝐲^{2n+1}}{\mathrm{sinh}(\chi _𝐲)}\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ \chi _𝐲^{2n}\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ \frac{\chi _𝐲^{2n+1}}{\mathrm{sin}(\chi _𝐲)}\hfill & K>0\hfill \end{array}}.`$ (33)
On superhorizon scales, we have $`\beta \alpha /\chi _𝐲`$ for a given comoving radius $`\chi _𝐲\chi _H`$ (where the results of §IV A imply that $`\pi <\alpha <3\pi /2`$). On sufficiently superhorizon scales, we may therefore choose $`\beta 1`$, and the lowest order contribution to (33) will be proportional to $`\beta ^0`$. Hence, $`f(𝐱)g(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(\beta )\beta ^0`$, provided that the integrals are finite, which will be the case if we appeal to causality to set $`<f(𝐱)g(𝐱+𝐲)>=0`$ for large values of the radial variable $`\chi _𝐲`$. This result confirms those by Avelino , Pen et al and Veerarghavan and Stebbins  for $`K=0`$.

Moreover, as the vector and tensor eigenfunctions given in Appendix A are proportional to the scalar radial functions $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l`$, we can conclude that correlators of vectors and tensors will be premultiplied by a factor behaving as for the scalars. This is in agreement with the results of Durrer et al for $`K=0`$, and corrects the common, but erroneous, conclusion that the flat space anisotropic stress power spectra go as $`k^4`$ (see, for example, refs. ).

Note that, if we attempt to find the behaviour with respect to $`k`$, we run into difficulties in describing the higher order corrections. This is a consequence of the fact that there will be a constant (curvature) contribution to the $`k^0`$ term from each term $`\beta ^{2n}`$ in the series expansion (33) of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐲)`$.

## V Superhorizon behaviour of the isotropic mode

Of the several arguments in the literature which use energy-momentum conservation to yield a $`k^4`$ superhorizon power spectrum for flat universes, that provided by Avelino  is the most convincing — see also refs. . Using Cartesian coordinates, and assuming that the volume is large enough to justify the ergodic hypothesis, we may equate spatial and ensemble averages, and Fourier transform the correlator of the stresses, arriving at

$`|\tau _{ij}(k,\eta )\tau _{kl}^{}(k,\eta ^{})|=V^1{\displaystyle _{|𝐲|<d_c}}\mathrm{d}^3ye^{ı𝐤𝐲}\tau _{ij}(𝐱,\eta )\tau _{kl}(𝐱+𝐲,\eta ^{}).`$ (34)
Here we have implicitly made use of the convolution theorem, and hence the property $`e^{ı𝐤𝐲}=e^{ı𝐤𝐱}e^{ı𝐤(𝐱+𝐲)}`$ of the exponential kernel used in Fourier theory, while causality implies that the correlator has compact support in $`𝐲`$. Hence, on superhorizon scales ($`|𝐤|d_c1`$) we may neglect the exponential part of the integrand and find that the “power spectrum” of the pseudo–stresses $`𝒫_{\tau _{ij}}=V|\tau _{ij}|^2/(2\pi )^3`$ approachs a constant: we have a white noise ($`k^0`$) spectrum. Noting that partial differentiation with respect to $`x^i`$ is equivalent to multiplying the associated Fourier variable by $`k_i`$, we may use energy-momentum conservation (36) to obtain the result:

$`𝒫_{\tau _{00}}=V{\displaystyle \frac{|\tau _{00}(k,\eta )|^2}{(2\pi )^3}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k_ik_jk_kk_l}{(2\pi )^3}}{\displaystyle _{\eta _i}^\eta }\mathrm{d}\eta _1{\displaystyle _{\eta _i}^{\eta _1}}\mathrm{d}\eta _2{\displaystyle _{\eta _i}^\eta }\mathrm{d}\eta _1^{}{\displaystyle _{\eta _i}^{\eta _1^{}}}\mathrm{d}\eta _2^{}\times `$ (36)
$`{\displaystyle _{|𝐲|<d_c}}\mathrm{d}^3y\tau _{ij}(𝐱,\eta _2)\tau _{kl}(𝐱+𝐲,\eta _2^{}).`$
We conclude that, since $`\tau _{ij}\tau _{kl}`$ exhibits white noise, then the power spectrum of $`\tau _{00}`$ should approach a $`k^4`$ spectrum on superhorizon scales, as has been confirmed in numerical studies . Similarly, the power spectrum of $`\tau _i^0`$ is proportional to $`k^2`$, in this limit.

The difficulty in generalising the above analysis to the general FRW universe lies in the lack of a useful equivalent to the exponential partial wave function in the general curved ($`K0`$) FRW universe (see ref. ), as well as in this argument’s dependence upon the choice of a Cartesian coordinate system. However, we can recast this argument using the eigenmodes of the Laplacian to investigate the constraints imposed by energy-momentum conservation and causality in both flat and instrinsically curved FRW universes, regaining also the familiar $`k^4`$ spectrum in the local (or $`|K|0`$) limit.

### A Eigenmode splitting in curved spherical coordinates

In order to generalise this argument we must be able to split our eigenmodes in spherical coordinates under spatial translations to obtain an analogue of the convolution theorem. For the flat ($`K=0`$) FRW universe and spherical coordinates we have the relationship

$`j_0(kr_𝐲)={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(2n+1)j_n(kr_𝐱)j_n(kr_{𝐱+𝐲})P_n(\mathrm{cos}\sigma ),`$ (37)
where $`\sigma `$ is the angle between $`𝐱`$ and $`𝐱+𝐲`$ and we have used $`r_𝐱=r_𝐱`$ . In Appendix B we generalise this to the isotropic radial modes $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐲)`$ associated with general FRW spacetimes:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐲)={\displaystyle \underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}(2n+1)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n(\chi _𝐱)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n(\chi _{𝐱+𝐲})P_n(\mathrm{cos}\sigma ).`$ (38)
The result (38) is valid for all $`𝐲`$. We are, however, principally interested in the superhorizon limit, under which this relation simplifies greatly. In the superhorizon limit, it is easy to show that $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l(\chi )(\beta \chi )^l`$. Also, $`𝐲`$ superhorizon ($`\beta \chi _𝐲1`$) implies that at least one of $`𝐱`$, $`𝐱+𝐲`$ is superhorizon also, for any given $`𝐱`$. Hence we can make use of the first order approximation only:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐲)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _{𝐱+𝐲}),`$ (39)
for $`𝐲`$ superhorizon. Thus the lowest radial eigen-mode plays a role analogous to that of the exponential in Fourier theory.

While Appendix B provides a formal proof of the full expansion (38), here we just obtain (39). Consider an eigenfunction expansion of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _{𝐮+𝐯})`$ in terms of $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐮)`$, after translation to $`𝐮+𝐯`$, which is given by

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _{𝐮+𝐯})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{l,m}{}}a_{lm}^\beta (𝐮)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l(\chi _𝐯)Y_{lm}(\theta _𝐯,\varphi _𝐯),`$ (40)
$`a_{lm}^\beta (𝐮)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{N_l}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐯\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _{𝐮+𝐯})\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l(\chi _𝐯)Y_{lm}(\theta _𝐯,\varphi _𝐯)},`$ (41)
where $`N_l=\sqrt{4\pi }dV_𝐯\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l(\chi _𝐯)Y_{lm}(\theta _𝐯,\varphi _𝐯)\right]^2`$. We shall demonstrate that $`a_{00}^\beta (\chi _𝐮)=\sqrt{4\pi }\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐮)`$, so that (for $`𝐮=𝐱`$ and $`𝐯=𝐱+𝐲`$) eqn (39) is confirmed, on superhorizon scales where this coefficient carries the leading order behaviour. Here, we give only the open universe argument, that for the $`K0`$ cosmologies being similar. Substituting for the volume element, for the $`l=0`$ spherical harmonic, and for each of the two radial eigenfunctions using (A13), yields

$`a_{00}^\beta (\chi _{𝐮+𝐯})={\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{\pi }}{|K|^{3/2}\beta ^2N_0}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d\chi _𝐯\mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐯\mathrm{sin}(\beta \chi _𝐯){\displaystyle _0^\pi }d\theta \mathrm{sin}\theta {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(\beta \chi _{𝐮+𝐯})}{\mathrm{sinh}\chi _{𝐮+𝐯}}}.`$ (42)
Changing variables from $`\theta `$ to $`\xi \chi _{𝐮+𝐯}`$ using (B2), we obtain the relation $`\mathrm{sin}\theta \mathrm{d}\theta =\mathrm{sinh}\xi \mathrm{d}\xi /\mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐯\mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐮`$, and calculate the inner integral to be $`\frac{2\mathrm{s}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}(\beta \chi _𝐯)\mathrm{sin}(\beta \chi _{𝐮+𝐯})}{\beta \mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐯\mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐮}`$. Hence,

$`a_{00}^\beta (\chi _𝐯)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\sqrt{\pi }}{|K|^{3/2}\beta ^2N_0}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(\beta \chi _𝐮)}{\beta \mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐮}}{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d\chi _𝐯\mathrm{sin}^2\beta \chi _𝐯=\sqrt{4\pi }{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}\beta \chi _𝐮}{\beta \mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐮}}`$ (43)
$`=`$ $`\sqrt{4\pi }\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐮),`$ (44)
where we have used the normalisation $`N_0=(|K|^{3/2}\beta ^2)^1_0^{\mathrm{}}d\chi \mathrm{sin}^2\beta \chi `$ in the last equality. Observe that, formally, we should evaluate $`N_0`$, and effect the cancellation in (44), in terms of a limit of a volume larger than all length scales of interest.

### B Integration by parts

Substituting (39) in (LABEL:00-dcor1), transforming the inner integration variable to $`𝐱+𝐲`$, and noting that the integrals are over all space so that $`\mathrm{d}V_{𝐱+𝐲}=\mathrm{d}V_𝐲`$, we see that the $`l=0`$ mode is given by the double integral in $`𝐱`$ and $`𝐱+𝐲`$:

$`\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱)\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2\pi ^2}}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)}`$ (46)
$`\times {\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}V_{𝐱+𝐲}\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}(𝐱+𝐲)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _{𝐱+𝐲}).`$
In order to evaluate the integrals in (46) we make use of a generalised form of Gauss’s Law

$`{\displaystyle _{G^3}}W_a^{;a}dV={\displaystyle _{G^2}}W_a\mathrm{dS}^\mathrm{a},`$ (47)
where $`\mathrm{d}V=\sqrt{g^{(3)}}\mathrm{d}x^1\mathrm{d}x^2\mathrm{d}x^3`$ and $`\mathrm{d}S^a=g^{(3)ab}\mathrm{d}S_a`$, $`\mathrm{d}S_a=(1/2!)ϵ_{am_1m_2}\mathrm{d}_1x^{m_1}\mathrm{d}_2x^{m_2}`$. Here, we may choose the $`3`$-dimensional vector components $`\mathrm{d}_ix^{m_i}`$ such that $`\mathrm{d}x^{m_i}`$ appears as the $`i`$-th component while the rest vanish (for instance, $`\mathrm{d}_2x^{m_2}=(0,\mathrm{d}x^{m_2},0)`$). As we are on a constant time hypersurface, the index $`a`$ runs over $`1,2,3`$ only, as do the $`m_i`$.

Now, if we replace $`W^a`$ with $`fW^a`$ in (47) where $`f`$ is some scalar quantity (so that $`f_{;a}=f_{,a}`$) and apply the chain rule, we obtain the result

$`{\displaystyle _{G^3}}dVfW_a^{;a}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{G^3}}dV(fW_a)^{;a}{\displaystyle _{G^3}}dVf^{,a}W_a`$ (48)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{G^2}}dS^a(fW_a){\displaystyle _{G^3}}dVf^{,a}W_a.`$ (49)
This is the formal expression of spatial integration by parts on a constant time hypersurface, and a similar result holds with the covariant and contravariant indices interchanged. We shall exploit this result twice in each of the two integrals in (46).

We shall proceed in some detail for the integral over $`𝐱`$. The $`𝐱+𝐲`$ integral is similar. Since the $`\tau _j^i`$ transform as tensors, setting $`f=\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)`$ and $`W_j=\tau _{j|i}^i`$ so that $`fW_j`$ is a vector, we find that

$`{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)W_j^{|j}}`$ (50)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)W_j\right]^{|j}}{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)\right]^{,j}W_j}`$ (51)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle df_𝐱^j\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)W_j\right]}{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)\right]^{,j}W_j}`$ (52)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)\right]^{,j}\tau _{j|i}^i},`$ (53)
where the third equality is obtained as in (49), and the fourth equality is obtained by substituting for $`W_j`$, and assuming that the surface integral term vanishes. Explicitly, the surface integrals vanish for all but the angular integral over the radial surface at infinity, by symmetry, and periodicity. This remaining surface integral may be also be set to zero on physical grounds by using the conservation equations (7) to obtain

$`\underset{R\mathrm{}}{lim}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(R){\displaystyle d\mathrm{\Omega }\left[\tau _{j|i}^i\right]_R}=\underset{R\mathrm{}}{lim}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(R){\displaystyle d\mathrm{\Omega }\left[\dot{\tau }_j^0\right]_R},`$ (54)
and by noting that beyond the horizon the functions $`[\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0\dot{\tau }_j^0]_R`$ (although possibly non–zero) should not make a net contribution to the correlator. Physically, we may think of this as an expression of the fact that we do not expect there to be any net bulk momentum transfers across a radial surface on the very largest scales, since $`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^j`$ is proportional to a well-defined momentum . This is a much less stringent requirement than that previously imposed (i.e. that the functions themselves go to zero beyond the horizon ) which is not expected to be true in most physical situations of interest. Our physically motivated and much weaker assumption thus allows for a more complete analysis of the superhorizon behaviour.

Repeating the analysis, we find that

$`{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}}=+{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\left\{\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)\right]^{,j}\right\}_{|i}\tau _j^i},`$ (55)
where we have once again ignored the surface terms. Explicitly, the only non-trivial surface term is again the radial surface at infinity:

$`\underset{R\mathrm{}}{lim}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(R)}{R}}{\displaystyle d\mathrm{\Omega }_𝐱\left[\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^i\right]_R}`$ (56)
and, this time, we expect there to be no net anisotropic shears across the radial surface on the largest scales, so that this surface term averages to zero and may be ignored. Hence, using the connection coefficients, as well as the derivative (A25) and recursion (A21) relations for the $`\mathrm{\Phi }_l^0`$, we see that

$`{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi _𝐱)\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}}={\displaystyle dV_𝐱\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0f_K\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)}+{\displaystyle dV_𝐱\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi )\left[\stackrel{~}{k}^2+2f_K\right]\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1},`$ (57)
where

$`f_K(\beta ,\chi )\mathrm{cot}_K^2\chi \beta \mathrm{cot}_K\mathrm{cot}(\beta \chi ),`$ (58)
and $`\mathrm{cot}_K\chi =\mathrm{cos}_K\chi /\mathrm{sin}_K\chi `$ where $`\mathrm{cos}_K\chi =\{\mathrm{cosh}\chi ,\chi ,\mathrm{cos}\chi \}`$ for $`\{K<0,`$ $`K=0,`$ $`K>0\}`$.

Proceeding in a similar fashion for the $`𝐱+𝐲`$ integral, multiplying to obtain four double integrals, and then reversing the steps that led to (46) — i.e. transforming back to $`𝐲`$ as the integration variable in the inner integral, and appealing to (39) — we may write the $`00`$–mode as

$`\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}_{00}(\beta )=`$ (59)
$`\left[\stackrel{~}{k}^2+2f_K(\beta ,\chi _𝐱)\right]\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1(𝐱)\left[\stackrel{~}{k}^2+2f_K(\beta ,\chi _{𝐱+𝐲})\right]\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(\beta )`$ (60)
$`+\left[\stackrel{~}{k}^2+2f_K(\beta ,\chi _𝐱)\right]\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1(𝐱)\left[f_K(\beta ,\chi _{𝐱+𝐲})\right]\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(\beta )`$ (61)
$`+f_K(\beta ,\chi _𝐱)\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)(𝐱)\left[\stackrel{~}{k}^2+2f_K(\beta ,\chi _{𝐱+𝐲})\right]\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(\beta )`$ (62)
$`+f_K(\beta ,\chi _𝐱)\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)(𝐱)\left[f_K(\beta ,\chi _{𝐱+𝐲})\right]\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(\beta ).`$ (63)
(64)
Each of the four correlators on the right hand side of (64) is equal to a double integral similar in form (though, clearly not in integrand) to (46). As remarked earlier, for $`𝐲`$ superhorizon, at least one of $`𝐱`$, $`𝐱+𝐲`$ is superhorizon also so that we may take the integral over that variable to be finite. Effectively, then, we have obtained the transfromed two-point correlators of the contracted derivatives of the pseudo-stresses—and hence the pseudo-energy—in terms of functions of $`k`$ times the transformed pseudo-stresses.

### C Flat space

For the flat space ($`K=0`$) case, on sufficiently superhorizon scales ($`kr1`$) we may take the limit

$`f_{K=0}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{r^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{k\mathrm{cot}(kr)}{r}}{\displaystyle \frac{k^2}{3}}\mathrm{for}kr1,`$ (65)
to show that the pre-factors $`(k^2+2f_{K=0})^2`$, $`f_{K=0}(k^2+2f_{K=0})`$, $`f_{K=0}^2`$ are functions of $`k`$ only, in the limit $`kr0`$. Hence, we may pull these factors out of the (implicit) integrals in (64) and, taking the limit to infinity, we obtain

$`\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}\tau _{q|p}^{p|q}_{00}(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{k^4}{9}}[\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1_{00}(k)+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3)_{00}(k)`$ (67)
$`+(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3)\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1_{00}(k)+(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3)(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3)_{00}(k)],`$
where the correlators on the right hand side of (LABEL:int-6) are known (see §IV B) to be proportional to $`k^0`$ in this limit. Hence, appealing to the conservation equations (7) and noting that time differentiation does not affect $`\beta `$-dependence in our eigenfunction expansions, we regain the familiar $`k^4`$ power spectrum, as the spectrum for the $`00`$-mode

$`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱)\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(k)k^4.`$ (69)
### D Open universe

In this case, there are three regimes of interest: supercurvature, sub–curvature, and the case in which $`\chi `$ is near the curvature scale. On superhorizon, supercurvature scales, $`\chi 1`$, $`\beta \chi 1`$ which implies that $`\beta 1/\chi 1`$. Hence, we have that $`\mathrm{coth}\chi 1`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{k}1`$, where these approximations are exact in this limit, and about which we have the expansion

$`f_{K<0}(\beta ,\chi )=1\beta \mathrm{cot}(\beta \chi )=1{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\chi }}+{\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^2\chi }{3}}\mathrm{}=O(1),\beta \chi 1,\chi 1.`$ (70)
(71)
Substituting (71) into (64), we see that the $`00`$-mode tends to a constant on supercurvature, and superhorizon scales. Explicitly, making the $`\stackrel{~}{k}1`$ approximation valid on these superhorizon and supercurvature scales, we obtain

$`\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}\tau _{j|i}^{i|j}_{00}(\beta )`$ $`=`$ $`a_1\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1_{00}(\beta )+a_2\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)_{00}(\beta )`$ (73)
$`+a_3\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}1}}^1_{00}(\beta )+a_4\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)\left(\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}2}}^2+\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}3}}^3\right)_{00}(\beta ),`$
$`\mathrm{for}`$ $`\chi _{𝐱,𝐲}1,\beta \chi _{𝐱,𝐲}1,`$ (74)
where the $`a_i`$ are constant factors. Recalling the equations of motion (7) for the energy-momentum pseudo-tensor, and that the correlator between two arbitrary functions goes as $`\beta ^0`$, we see that on very supercurvature and very superhorizon scales, the correlators behave as:

$`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0_{00}\beta ^0.`$ (75)
Turning now to the other asymptote, we consider the case in which the horizon is very much less than the curvature scale. Then, on superhorizon, and very much subcurvature scales, we regain the familiar $`k^4`$ power spectrum, up to a constant factor. Using the series expansions appropriate for $`\chi 1`$ and $`\beta \chi 1`$, one easily finds that

$`f_{K<0}={\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^2+1}{3}}={\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{k}^2}{3}},\beta \chi 1,\chi 1.`$ (76)
This has the same form as the superhorizon limit of $`f_{K=0}`$. However, one should recall that, while $`\beta `$ (for the $`K<0`$ case) and $`k`$ (for $`K=0`$) have similar spectra, their meanings are different in the two spacetimes — see equation (12). In particular, we have, for the open universe with $`\chi 1`$, two cases: $`\beta <1`$ and $`\beta >1`$. These correspond to mode wavelengths approximately equal to and smaller than the curvature horizon, respectively. In the former case, $`f_{K<0}1/3`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{k}1`$ so that we have the result (75) once more. In the latter, $`f_{K<0}\beta ^2/3`$, for large $`\beta `$, in which case we also have that $`\stackrel{~}{k}^2\beta ^2`$. Then, recalling the normalisation of $`k`$, we have the local (subcurvature) superhorizon limit:

$`f_{K<0}(\chi ,\beta ){\displaystyle \frac{1}{|K|}}f_{K=0}(\stackrel{~}{k},r).`$ (77)
Recalling the conservation equations (7), this means that

$`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱)\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱+𝐲)_{00}(\beta )\stackrel{~}{k}^4={\displaystyle \frac{k^4}{|K|^2}}\beta ^4,\chi _{𝐱,𝐲}1,\beta \chi _{𝐱,𝐲}1,`$ (78)
where $`k`$ is the flat space Fourier wavenumber.

Having dealt with both the extreme cases of local flatness and curvature domination, there remains the interesting question of the behaviour near the curvature scale. We therefore would like to understand how the $`k^4`$ superhorizon behaviour on sub–curvature scales becomes $`\beta ^0=k^0`$ on very super–curvature scales, and the ranges within which these approximations are valid.

Away from the asymptotes dealt with above, $`f_{K<0}`$ is a function of the radial coordinate, and therefore is integrated over (twice) in equation (64). This means that we may only truly understand the effect of the factors in this equation by explicitly calculating the integral, which requires that we specify the pseudo–stresses. As a first approximation, however, we may proceed to obtain some understanding of the superhorizon behaviour of generic causal perturbations by assuming that the corrections are small enough for us to make the approximation

$`<\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱)\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱+𝐲)>_{00}(P1+P2+P3+P4)A_{00},`$ (79)
where

$`\begin{array}{cc}P1=(\stackrel{~}{k}^2+2f_{K<0})^2,\hfill & P2=f_{K<0}(\stackrel{~}{k}^2+2f_{K<0}),\hfill \\ P3=(\stackrel{~}{k}^2+2f_{K<0})f_{K<0},\hfill & P4=f_{K<0}^2,\hfill \end{array}`$ (82)
for some given $`\chi `$, and where we have assumed that the correlators of the $`\tau _j^i`$ are well modelled by window functions of the form used in §IV A. This assumption amounts to ignoring long range correlations, since we assume that $`\chi _𝐱\chi _{𝐱+𝐲}`$. Hence this approximation is valid for $`\chi _𝐲`$ small, that is, in the very early universe.

We provide surface plots for these pre-factors in Figures 35, from which we can clearly see how our approximations are valid only for $`\chi <0.5`$, and break down as we move into the large $`\chi `$ and large $`\beta `$ regime, doing so much earlier than in the $`K=0`$ scenario. This is a geometric effect due to the fact that the majority of the volume in a hyperbolic space is located near the radial surface, so that a large ‘hyper-sphere’ approximates a ‘hyper-shell’. This effect is most noticible on supercurvature scales. However, one can calculate that the ratio of hyperbolic volume to surface area rapidly diverges from that for a spherical geometry, beginning at around $`\chi 0.5`$. On the other hand, the steep slope in the prefactor $`P_1`$ for large $`\beta `$ and $`\chi <0.4`$ is due to the appearance of a constant (curvature) term in the (repeated) $`\stackrel{~}{k}`$ factors in this prefactor. However, as $`\chi `$ increases, so does $`f_{K<0}`$, first cancelling, and then overriding this effect. Along the $`\beta `$ axis in each plot (i.e. for $`\chi 0`$), we see that all the pre-factors go as $`k^4/9`$ for $`K=0`$ and as $`(\beta ^2+1)^2/9`$ for $`K=1`$. Along the $`\chi `$ axis ($`\beta 0`$), all the pre-factors vanish for $`K=0`$. However, for the $`K=1`$ case, this is not the case, reflecting the small constant (curvature) term.

Computing $`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0`$ using the approximation (79) we find the curves plotted in Figure 6. These show clearly how the $`k^4`$ behaviour on superhorizon scales is flattened out, for small $`\beta `$, by the intrinsic curvature. We note that this does not mean that we expect the real space correlators to similarly go to a constant on these scales because, of course, they vanish by causality. Integrating (79) over all $`\beta `$, with the kernel $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0`$, the constant term is suppressed by the measure $`\mathrm{d}\mu (\beta )=\beta ^2\mathrm{d}\beta `$. Similarly, calculating the variance

$`\sigma ^2={\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}d\mu (\beta )\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0_{00}(\beta )={\displaystyle _0^1}d\mu (\beta )\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0_{00}(\beta )+{\displaystyle _1^{\mathrm{}}}d\mu (\beta )\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0_{00}(\beta ),`$ (83)
and breaking the integral over all $`\beta `$ into supercurvature and subcurvature parts, we see that the second integral is procedurally the same as for the flat space case, for both sub- and superhorizon scales, while the first (containing the constant power spectrum constribution) is suppressed by the $`\beta ^2`$ factor in the measure.

### E Closed universe

For the closed universe we have the prefactors determined by

$`f_{K>0}(\beta ,\chi )=\mathrm{cot}^2\chi \beta \mathrm{cot}\chi \mathrm{cot}(\beta \chi ).`$ (84)
The difference between the open and closed universe cases is quantified by the differences between the behaviour of the function (84) and that of $`f_{K<0}`$. To begin with, the eigenspectrum for $`\beta `$ is discrete, and the lowest non-gauge mode is $`\beta =3`$ so that the superhorizon limit $`\beta \chi _H1`$ can only be attained for $`\chi _H1/3`$. Of course, for $`\chi _H1`$ we encounter the periodic properties the closed universe: one cannot have modes that are both superhorizon and supercurvature.

If we take $`\chi 1`$ and $`\beta \chi 1`$, then we consider the subcurvature yet superhorizon case. Here, we note that $`\mathrm{cot}\chi 1/\chi \chi /3`$, wo we have

$`f_{K>0}={\displaystyle \frac{\beta ^21}{3}}={\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{k}^2}{3}},\beta \chi 1,\chi 1,`$ (85)
and we regain the flat space results in a similar fashion to the open universe case. Hence, an analysis similar to that for the open universe shows that we once again find the local limit

$`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱)\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱+𝐲){\displaystyle \frac{\stackrel{~}{k}^4}{9}}`$ (86)
where $`\stackrel{~}{k}^4=(\beta ^21)^2k^4/|K|^2`$ for large $`\beta `$, with $`k`$ being the flat space Fourier wavenumber.

## VI Discussion

It would be of great physical interest if the consequences of this superhorizon behaviour were within the range of observational searches because it would test ‘active’ theories for structure formation, and possibly probe the curvature of the universe. The cosmic microwave sky may provide the best prospect, however, for the CMB temperature spectrum the superhorizon ‘fall-off’ expected on the very largest scales will be confused by cosmic variance. The most likely signature would be through the CMB polarization spectrum because it represents a primordial snapshot of the universe at recombination which includes about $`10^5`$ different horizon volumes. The lack of spatial correlations on scales corresponding to the horizon size at that time (about $`2^{}`$), and the fall-off in their transformed counterparts, should be observationally testable. Previous analysis of this possibility , however, has only considered scalar modes, so we comment on the possible impact of vector and tensor modes here. We leave discussion of the observational imprint of this superhorizon behaviour for a future publication , concentrating instead on the consistent implementation of initial conditions for numerical simulations.

### A SVT decomposition and superhorizon coherence

The decomposition of a tensor perturbation into its scalar, vector and tensor parts is not without its subtleties , since the projection operators yielding the scalar, vector and tensor parts are not, in general, analytic. The spatial distribution of the separate geometric parts may therefore be significantly different from the physical distribution of the entire object, so that the decomposed parts of a causal tensor object can manifest acausal features. The transformed variables will then in turn exhibit non-analytic behaviour , complicating the analysis of their superhorizon behaviour. However, causality is merely hidden, and, since the arguments presented in this paper for the (scalar) energy density perturbation are (trivially) phrased in terms of full tensors, they escape this difficulty.

On the other hand, it is common to employ the assumption of coherence, in which case one regains analyticity , all the decomposed parts of the perturbation are causal, and one may obtain the power spectra by simple power counting. This allows us to write down the auto-correlators for both the scalar and the vector parts of the pseudo-tensor $`\tau _\nu ^\mu `$, under the influence of energy-momentum conservation.

If we decompose the pseudo-tensor $`\tau _\nu ^\mu `$ as in (A39), we may write the energy-momentum equations (7) as

$`\tau _{IV}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\dot{\tau }_S}{k}},k\dot{\tau }_{IV}=2k^2\left[\tau _L+2\left({\displaystyle \frac{K}{k^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{3}}\right)\tau _T\right]=\ddot{\tau }_S,`$ (87)
$`\tau _{IT}^{(\pm 1)}`$ $`=`$ $`2k[k^22K]^1\dot{\tau }_V^{(\pm 1)}={\displaystyle \frac{\ddot{h}_V^{(\pm 1)}}{\kappa }},`$ (88)
where we have used the first equation to obtain the final equality in the second. Assuming coherence, we find that the scalar ($`\tau _S`$) and vector ($`\tau _{IV}`$, $`\tau _V`$) degrees of freedom have auto-correlators that go as

$`|\tau _S|^2(\beta )`$ $``$ $`\stackrel{~}{k}^2|\tau _{IV}|^2(\beta ),`$ (89)
$`|\tau _{IV}|^2(\beta )`$ $``$ $`\stackrel{~}{k}^2\left(4|\tau _L|^2(\beta ){\displaystyle \frac{16}{3}}\tau _L\tau _T^{}(\beta )+{\displaystyle \frac{16}{9}}|\tau _T|^2(\beta )\right)`$ (90)
$`+`$ $`16K\left(|\tau _L|^2{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}|\tau _T|^2(\beta )\right)+16{\displaystyle \frac{K^2}{\stackrel{~}{k}^2}}|\tau _T|^2(\beta ),`$ (91)
$`|\tau _V^{(\pm 1)}|^2(\beta )`$ $``$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}\stackrel{~}{k}^2K+{\displaystyle \frac{K^2}{\stackrel{~}{k}^2}}\right)|\tau _{IT}^{(\pm 1)}|^2(\beta ),`$ (92)
on superhorizon scales. Moreover, the correlators for $`\tau _L`$, $`\tau _T`$, and $`\tau _{IT}`$ have white noise superhorizon behaviour (refer to §IV B and ) so we see that in the local limit ($`\chi <<1`$, $`\beta >>1`$) we regain the flat space results, with the scalar power spectrum $`\stackrel{~}{k}^4`$, while those of the vectors is proportional to $`\stackrel{~}{k}^2`$. In the supercurvature limit, they all tend to a constant. Note that the correlators in (92) do not diverge as $`\beta 0`$, since $`\stackrel{~}{k}`$ tends to $`1`$ in this limit.

The results (92) are more general than one might suppose upon first inspection, as an arbitrary decoherent source may be written as a ‘decoherent sum’ of coherent sources, each of which will then be amenable to the above arguments . Moreover, we believe that it is plausible to expect approximate coherence on the very largest scales, since the eigenfunctions used to diagonalise the ‘decoherent sum’ are likely to either all tend to white noise on these scales, or to be dominated by just one element in the sum — see also ref. . This notion has been ventured before as an hypothesis  for scaling sources, and is supported by both numerical results , and by the observation that, for causal sources, modes with wavelengths much larger than the horizon cannot be significantly out of phase with one another. We shall consider this point in more detail elsewhere .

### B Matching conditions and initial conditions

Finally, we wish to propose a set of initial conditions which would find useful application in numerical simulations of causal perturbation models, such as cosmic defects. We shall assume, as is usual, that we are dealing primarily with the evolution of transformed quantities. By considered an instantaneous phase transition early in the universe as a first approximation to a model for cosmic defects “switching on”, and employing a gauge in which constant energy and constant time surfaces coincide, matching conditions can be used to show that there exists an entire class of objects which are continuous across the transition and are related by gauge transformation to our pseudo-tensor components. In a previous paper (ref. ), we used the notion of compensation together with a particular gauge specification to remove this redundancy such that the $`\tau _S`$ (pseudo-energy) and $`\tau _V^{(\pm 1)}`$ (divergenceless vector) components of our generalized pseudo-tensor have this property:

$`[\tau _S]_\pm =0,[\tau _V^{\pm 1}]_\pm =0.`$ (93)
While we emphasise that this matching depends on a special gauge choice, it is one which should be widely applicable in many physical situations, for example, a defect-forming transition .

For a universe which was unperturbed (and hence homogeneous and isotropic) prior to the transition, we may then take $`\tau _S=0=\tau _V^{(\pm 1)}`$ as natural initial conditions. This result is consistent on all scales and is especially appropriate for suppressed superhorizon modes. The results of §V confirm this conclusion for the density perturbation tracked by $`\tau _S`$, and the previous section argues that this conclusion may be extended also to the ‘induced vector’ mode $`\tau _{IV}`$ and the true vector modes $`\tau _V^{\pm 1}`$. Hence, if one wishes to set initial conditions for perturbations initially outside the horizon, one may consistently set both the pseudo-energy $`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0`$ and the pseudo-momentum $`\tau _i^0`$ to zero. If one wishes to include long wavelength modes that are affected by curvature, then one can proceed in a similar fashion. Although the transformed correlators become constant on these scales, at early times they are sufficiently outside the horizon for their amplitude to be strongly suppressed. Therefore, the matching conditions we propose as initial conditions will also be applicable and self-consistent for a curved universe.

## Acknowledgements

We are grateful for useful discussions with Rob Crittenden, Martin Landriau, Neil Turok, and Proty Wu. GA acknowledges the support of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust; ORS; Trinity Hall; Cecil Renaud Educational and Charitable Trust. This work was supported by PPARC grant no. PPA/G/O/1999/00603.

## A Eigenfunctions of the Laplacian

The scalar eigenfunctions are given by solutions to (11) with $`|m|=0`$ (c.f., with a slightly different normalisation, ref. ):

$`\zeta _{\beta lm}(𝐱)=\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{2}{\pi }}}\mathrm{\Phi }_l^\beta (y)Y_l^m(\theta ,\varphi ).`$ (A1)
Here the angular dependence is contained in the spherical harmonics which are given by $`Y_l^m(\theta ,\varphi )=\sqrt{\frac{2l+1}{4\pi }\frac{(lm)!}{(l+m)!}}P_l^m(\mathrm{cos}\theta )\mathrm{e}^{im\varphi }`$ (where $`P_l^m`$ is an associated Legendre function), while the radial function $`\mathrm{\Phi }_l^\beta `$ is

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l=\{\begin{array}{cc}\left(\frac{\pi N_\beta ^l}{2\beta ^2\mathrm{sinh}\chi }\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}P_{\frac{1}{2}+ı\beta }^{\frac{1}{2}l}(\mathrm{cosh}\chi )\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ j_l(\beta \chi )=j_l(kr)\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ \left(\frac{\pi M_\beta ^l}{2\beta ^2\mathrm{sin}\chi }\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}P_{\frac{1}{2}+\beta }^{\frac{1}{2}l}(\mathrm{cos}\chi )\hfill & K=>0\hfill \end{array},`$ (A5)
with $`N_\beta ^l=\mathrm{\Pi }_{n=0}^l(\beta ^2+n^2)`$ and $`M_\beta ^l=\mathrm{\Pi }_{n=0}^l(\beta ^2n^2)`$. By Taylor expanding about $`\beta \chi `$ small, we may show that $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^lj_l(kr)`$ in the limit $`y0`$, $`\beta \mathrm{}`$.

The basis $`\{\zeta _{\beta lm}\}`$ is orthonormal as well as complete, and is normalised according to

$`{\displaystyle _S}dV\zeta _{\beta ^{}l^{}m^{}}^{}\zeta _{\beta lm}=\delta (\beta ^{},\beta )\delta _{l^{}l}\delta _{m^{}m},`$ (A6)
where $`\delta (\beta ^{}\beta )`$ is the delta function with respect to the measure $`\mu (\beta )`$:

$`\begin{array}{ccc}d\mu (\beta )=_0^{\mathrm{}}\beta ^2d\beta ,\hfill & \delta (\beta ,\beta ^{})=\frac{1}{\beta ^2}\delta (\beta \beta ^{}),\hfill & \mathrm{for}K0,\hfill \\ d\mu (\beta )=_{\beta =3}^{\mathrm{}}\beta ^2,\hfill & \delta (\beta ,\beta ^{})=\frac{1}{\beta ^2}\delta _{\beta \beta ^{}},\hfill & \mathrm{for}K>0.\hfill \end{array}`$ (A9)
The $`l=0`$ and $`l=1`$ radial modes are given  by the exact formulae (rewritten for a continuous range of $`K`$ values):

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sin}(\beta \chi )}{\beta }}\times \{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}\chi }\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{\chi }\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{\mathrm{sin}\chi }\hfill & K>0\hfill \end{array},`$ (A13)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1=\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0\times \{\begin{array}{cc}\left(\beta ^2+1\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\left[\mathrm{coth}\chi \beta \mathrm{cot}(\beta \chi )\right]\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{\beta }\left[\frac{1}{\chi }\beta \mathrm{cot}(\beta \chi )\right]\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ \left(\beta ^21\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\left[\mathrm{cot}\chi \beta \mathrm{cot}(\beta \chi )\right]\hfill & K>0\hfill \end{array}.`$ (A17)
The radial function $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l`$ may be recursively calculated using the exact formulae (A13), (A17) and the relations:

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l=\{\begin{array}{cc}\left(\beta ^2+l^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\left[(2l1)(\mathrm{coth}\chi )\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l1}\left[\beta ^2+(l1)^2\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l2}\right]\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{\beta }\left[(2l1)\frac{1}{\chi }\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l1}\beta \mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l2}\right]\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ \left(\beta ^2l^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\left[(2l1)(\mathrm{cot}\chi )\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l1}\left[\beta ^2(l1)^2\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l2}\right]\hfill & K>0\hfill \end{array},`$ (A21)
while the derivative with respect to the radial coordinate may be found using

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}\chi }}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l=\{\begin{array}{cc}l(\mathrm{coth}\chi )\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l\left[\beta ^2+(l+1)^2\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l+1}\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ \frac{l}{\chi }\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l\beta \mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l+1}\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ l(\mathrm{cot}\chi )\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^l\left[\beta ^2(l+1)^2\right]^{\frac{1}{2}}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{l+1}\hfill & K>0\hfill \end{array}.`$ (A25)
Using (A25) and (A21) for $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^2`$ respectively, one may obtain the relations:

$`\begin{array}{cc}\frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}\chi }\left[\frac{\mathrm{sinh}^2\chi }{\sqrt{\beta ^2+1}}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1(\chi )\right]=\mathrm{sinh}^2\chi \mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi )\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}\chi }\left[\frac{\chi ^2}{\beta }\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1(\chi )\right]=\chi ^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^0(\chi )\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}\chi }\left[\frac{\mathrm{sin}^2\chi }{\sqrt{\beta ^21}}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^1(\chi )\right]=\mathrm{sin}^2\chi \varphi _\beta ^0(\chi )\hfill & K>0\hfill \end{array}.`$ (A29)
The vector eigenfunctions satisfy (11) for $`|m|=1`$, subject to the divergenceless condition $`D^iQ_i^{(\pm 1)}=0`$, where the spectrum is defined by $`\beta ^2=(k^2+2K)/|K|`$. The radial component $`Q_1^{(\pm 1)}`$ is given by

$`Q_1^{(1)}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\beta }}\left[l(l+1)\right]^{1/2}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^lY_{lm}\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}\chi }\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{\chi }\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{\mathrm{sin}\chi }\hfill & K>0\hfill \end{array}`$ (A33)
and similarly for $`m=1`$, while the remaining (angular) components may be obtained by substituting (A33) into (11). The vector eigenfunctions satisfy normalisation conditions obtained by replacing $`\zeta _{\beta ^{}l^{}m^{}}^{}\zeta _{\beta lm}`$ with $`\zeta _{i\beta ^{}l^{}m^{}}^{(\pm 1)}\zeta _{\beta lm}^{i(\pm 1)}`$ in (A6), with $`Q_i^{(\pm 1)}(\beta ,l,m)=\zeta _{i\beta lm}^{(\pm 1)}`$.

The tensor eigenfunctions satisfy (11) for $`|m|=2`$, subject to the transverse-traceless ($`D^iQ_{ij}^{(2)}=0=Q_i^{(2)i}`$) and symmetry ($`Q_{ij}^{(2)}=Q_{ji}^{(2)}`$) constraints. The spectrum is given by $`\beta ^2=(k^2+3K)/|K|`$. The radial–radial component is given by

$`Q_{11}^{(2)}=\left[{\displaystyle \frac{(l+2)(l+1)l(l1)}{2\beta ^2(\beta ^2K)}}\right]^{1/2}\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^lY_{lm}\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}^2\chi }\hfill & K<0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{\chi ^2}\hfill & K=0\hfill \\ \frac{1}{\mathrm{sin}^2\chi }\hfill & K>0\hfill \end{array}`$ (A37)
and similarly for $`m=2`$. The remaining components may be obtained by substituting (A37) in (11) and the constraints. Normalisation has again been achieved by a replacement of the integrand in (A6) by $`\zeta _{ij\beta ^{}l^{}m^{}}^{(\pm 2)}\zeta _{\beta lm}^{ij(\pm 2)}`$.

Using this decomposition we may decompose arbitrary scalar, vector and tensor perturbations. For example, the pseudo-tensor $`\tau _\nu ^\mu `$ defined in (6) may be written as:

$`\tau _{\mathrm{\hspace{0.33em}\hspace{0.33em}0}}^0(𝐱,\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d\mu (\beta )\tau _SQ^{(0)}},`$ (A38)
$`\tau _i^0(𝐱,\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle d\mu (\beta )\left[\tau _{IV}Q_i^{(0)}+\tau _V^{(1)}Q_i^{(1)}+\tau _V^{(1)}Q_i^{(1)}\right]},`$ (A39)
$`\tau _j^i(𝐱,\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }\mathrm{d}\mu (\beta )[2(\tau _L\gamma _j^iQ^{(0)}+\tau _TQ_j^{(0)i})+\tau _{IT}^{(1)}Q_j^{(1)i}+\tau _{IT}^{(1)}Q_j^{(1)i}`$ (A41)
$`+\tau _G^{(2)}Q_j^{(2)i}+\tau _G^{(2)}Q_j^{(2)i}],`$
where the coefficients on the right hand side have suppressed dependence on both $`\beta `$ and $`\tau `$. Their explicit form is given in ref. . Here $`\tau _L`$ and $`\tau _T`$ represent two ‘longitudinal’ and ‘transverse’ scalar degrees of freedom, associated with the auxillary tensors $`\gamma _j^iQ^{(0)}`$ and $`Q_j^{(0)i}=k^2Q_{|j}^{(0)|i}+\frac{1}{3}\gamma _j^iQ^{(0)}`$ respectively; $`\tau _{IV}`$ is the vector mode ‘induced’ by the auxillary vector $`Q_i^{(0)}=k^1Q_{|i}^{(0)}`$; and $`\tau _{IT}^{(\pm 1)}`$ are the tensor modes ‘induced’ by $`Q_{ij}^{(\pm 1)}=(2k)^1\left[Q_{i|j}^{(\pm 1)}+Q_{j|i}^{(\pm 1)}\right]`$. As well as the transform over the ‘radial’ coordinate $`\beta `$, there is an implicit sum over indices $`\mathrm{}m`$ which label the spherical harmonics encoding the angular dependence.

## B “Addition” results for $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{\mathrm{}}(\chi )`$

Here we generalise the result (37) to the $`K0`$ and $`l0`$ cases, and prove that the radial eigenfunctions at $`𝐮`$ and $`𝐯`$ are related to those at $`𝐮+𝐯`$ by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n(\chi _{𝐮+𝐯})}{(\mathrm{sinh}\chi _{𝐮+𝐯})^n}}=\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu (\chi _{𝐮+𝐯})={\displaystyle \underset{m=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}b_m{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{n+m}(\chi _𝐮)}{(\mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐮)^n}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{n+m}(\chi _𝐯)}{(\mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐯)^n}}C_m^\nu (\mathrm{cos}\sigma ),`$ (B1)
where $`b_m`$ is independent of $`\chi _𝐮`$, $`\chi _𝐯`$ and $`\sigma `$, and may be found by comparing coefficients. For $`𝐮=𝐱`$ and $`𝐯=𝐱+𝐲`$ and for the $`l=0`$ case, we may appeal to the common normalisation of our radial eigenfunctions (for the $`K=0`$ and $`K0`$ universes) to obtain (38).

Foch  proved this result for the special case $`l=0`$, and for a closed universe only. Here we follow the method of Gegenbauer  to obtain a more general result for the $`l`$-th radial eigenmode of an open universe. The proof for the closed universe is similar.

For curved geometries, the radial coordinates at $`𝐮`$ and $`𝐯`$ are related to those at $`𝐮+𝐯`$ via

$`\mathrm{cos}_K\chi _{𝐮+𝐯}=\mathrm{cos}_K\chi _𝐮\mathrm{cos}_K\chi _𝐯{\displaystyle \frac{K}{|K|}}\mathrm{sin}_K\chi _𝐮\mathrm{sin}_K\chi _𝐯\mathrm{cos}\sigma ,`$ (B2)
where we use $`\mathrm{sin}_K\chi `$ and $`\mathrm{cos}_K\chi `$ as previously defined, but only for the $`K0`$ cases. Here, $`\sigma `$ is the angle between $`𝐮`$ and $`𝐯`$ (in the hyperplane defined by these vectors), and where we may (without loss of generality) choose $`𝐮`$ pointing towards the north pole such that $`\sigma =\theta `$. For the open (closed) universes, equation (B2) clearly reduces to the flat space result $`r_{𝐮+𝐯}^2=r_𝐮^2+r_𝐯^2+2r_𝐮r_𝐯\mathrm{cos}\sigma `$, in the local limit and for $`|K|0`$.

The $`n`$-th radial eigenfunction satisfies the equation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n(\chi )}{\chi ^2}}+2\mathrm{coth}\chi {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n(\chi )}{\chi }}+\left(k^2{\displaystyle \frac{n(n+1)}{\mathrm{sinh}^2\chi }}\right)\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n(\chi )=0.`$ (B3)
From the $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n`$ we may construct the quantity

$`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Psi }_\nu }{(\mathrm{sinh}\chi )^\nu }}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n(\chi )}{(\mathrm{sinh}\chi )^n}},`$ (B4)
where $`\nu =n+1/2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_\nu `$, defined by $`\mathrm{\Psi }_\nu \sqrt{\mathrm{sinh}\chi }\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^n(\chi )`$, expresses a relationship similar to that between the spherical (half-integer) and ordinary (integer) Bessel functions. Then, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu `$ satisfies the equation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu }{\chi ^2}}+(2\nu +1)\mathrm{coth}\chi {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu }{\chi }}+[k^2+(\nu 1/2)(\nu +3/2)]\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu =0.`$ (B5)
Next, we use the addition rule for a hyper-sphere (B2) to write (B5) in terms of derivatives with respect to $`\chi _𝐮`$ and $`\sigma `$, assuming without loss of generality that $`\chi _𝐯`$ is constant. Hence, we obtain the equation

$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\mathrm{sinh}^2\chi _𝐮}}\left[{\displaystyle \frac{^2}{\sigma ^2}}+2\nu \mathrm{cot}\sigma {\displaystyle \frac{}{\sigma }}\right]\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu `$ $`+`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{^2\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu }{\chi _𝐮}}+(2\nu +1)\mathrm{coth}\chi _𝐮{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu }{\chi _𝐮}}`$ (B6)
$`+`$ $`\left[k^2+(\nu 1/2)(\nu +3/2)\right]\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu =0.`$ (B7)
We now assume that $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu `$ can be expanded as $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\nu =_{m=n}^{\mathrm{}}B_mC_m^\nu (\mathrm{cos}\sigma )`$ where $`B_m`$ is independent of $`\sigma `$, and the $`C_m^\nu (\mathrm{cos}\sigma )`$ is a (Gegenbauer) polynomial of degree $`m`$ in $`\mathrm{cos}\sigma `$. Formally, it may be shown  that $`\left\{\frac{^2}{\sigma ^2}+2\nu \mathrm{cot}\sigma \frac{}{\sigma }\right\}C_m^\nu (\mathrm{cos}\sigma )`$ is a constant multiple of $`C_m^\nu (\mathrm{cos}\sigma )`$, so that $`C_m^\nu (\mathrm{cos}\sigma )`$ may be taken to be the coefficient of $`a^m`$ in the series expansion of $`(12a\mathrm{cos}\sigma +a^2)^\nu `$.

From the properties of these Gegenbauer functions $`C_m^\nu (\mathrm{cos}\sigma )`$, , we thus arrive at the following equation for $`B_m`$, as a function of $`\chi _𝐮`$:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{^2B_m}{\chi _𝐮^2}}+(2\nu +1)\mathrm{coth}\chi _𝐮{\displaystyle \frac{B_m}{\chi _𝐮}}+[k^2+(\nu 1/2)(\nu +3/2)]B_m{\displaystyle \frac{m(2\nu +m)}{\mathrm{sinh}^2\chi _𝐮}}B_m=0,`$ (B8)
(B9)
which has solutions $`B_m\frac{\mathrm{\Phi }_\beta ^{n+m}(\chi _𝐮)}{(\mathrm{sinh}\chi _𝐮)^n}`$, and so, appealing to the symmetry between $`\chi _𝐮`$ and $`\chi _𝐯`$, we have (B1).


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# Precision measurement of the metastable ³P₂ lifetime of neon

## Abstract

The lifetime of the metastable $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ state of neon has been determined to $`14.70(13)\mathrm{s}`$ (decay rate $`0.06801(62)\mathrm{s}^1`$) by measuring the decay in fluorescence of an ensemble of 20Ne atoms trapped in a magneto-optical trap (MOT). Due to low background gas pressure ($`p<5\times 10^{11}\text{mbar}`$) and low relative excitation to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{3}^{}`$ state (0.5 % excitation probability) operation only small corrections have to be included in the lifetime extrapolation. Together with a careful analysis of residual loss mechanisms in the MOT a lifetime determination to high precision is achieved.

In contrast to its importance for various active fields of research covering such a wide range as atomic physics, quantum optics, and nuclear physics, there still has been no measurement of the natural lifetime of the metastable $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ state LS  of neon with sufficient precision. A selection of research activities profiting from an improved measurement include the quest for Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of metastable neon, advanced atomic structure calculations, the investigation of ultracold collisions, and even precision tests of the electroweak theory being currently persued by investigating the nuclear decay of an optically trapped sample of 19Ne in the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ state berkeley .

Ongoing research directed towards BEC of metastable neon atoms in the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ state Beijerinck ; uns  clearly will benefit from an accurate knowledge of the state’s lifetime. This includes the optimization of the production process as well as the study of collision processes such as Penning-ionization Penning  and elastic s-wave scattering. Exciting new physics complementing the work on metastable helium HeBEC1 ; HeBEC2  can be expected for a $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ neon condensate. We would like to point out the study of higher-order correlations Correlations  and the intriguing possibility of a modification of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ decay rate due to the high phase-space density or the phase coherence in a BEC Savage .

Significant advance in atomic structure calculations has already been and will be further triggered Kim  by the work presented here. To date only a preliminary experimental value of 22 s for the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetime of neon exists ShimizuNeon  with no detailed investigations having been performed Shimizuprivate . A precise determination of the lifetime will put a more stringent test on theory. For most rare-gas atoms, the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetime depends sensitively on electron correlations and relativistic corrections. The latter have only a minor effect for the case of neon, making neon specifically interesting for a critcal test of electron correlations. In addition, our measurement will close the chain of $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetime measurements for rare-gas atoms beyond helium performed in recent years for Ar ($`38_5^{+8}\mathrm{s}`$ ShimizuArKr ), Kr ($`39_4^{+5}\mathrm{s}`$ ShimizuArKr  and $`28.3_{1.8}^{+1.8}\mathrm{s}`$ Walhout ), and Xe ($`42.9_{0.9}^{+0.9}\mathrm{s}`$ and $`42.4_{1.3}^{+1.3}\mathrm{s}`$ Rolston ), respectively. This will deliver the input for a detailed systematic investigation of the Z-dependence of metastable lifetimes.

An accurate experimental determination of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetimes of rare-gas atoms other than helium has only been achievable by the ability to prepare cold atom samples in a MOT ShimizuNeon ; ShimizuArKr ; Rolston ; Walhout . For a precision lifetime measurement, the coupling of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{3}^{}`$ state by the MOT light has to be considered since it will modify the observed decay rate. To date, two different methods making use of a variable MOT-on/off duty cycle have been employed, either by directly measuring the rate of UV photons produced by the decay during a MOT-off period Rolston ; Walhout  or by extrapolating the observed decay rate for varying MOT-on/off duty ratios to vanishing MOT-on periods ShimizuArKr .

In our approach, we record the decay of fluorescence in a MOT (Fig. 1) for different steady-state values of the population $`\pi _3`$ of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{3}^{}`$ state ($`0.005<\pi _3<0.47`$). This allows the extrapolation of the observed decay rate to $`\pi _3=0`$ thus giving the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetime. Extreme care has been taken to achieve optimized experimental conditions such as low background gas pressure ($`p<5\times 10^{11}\text{mbar}`$) and MOT operation for such low values as $`\pi _3=0.005`$. This minimizes the amount of required corrections dramatically and the accuracy to which the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetime of Ne can be determined is improved considerably.

With no observable changes in shape and temperature of the atom sample, the temporal evolution of the observed fluorescence is proportional to the temporal evolution of the number of trapped atoms $`N(t)`$. The decay can be described by the differential equation

$$\frac{\text{d}}{\text{d}t}N(t)=\alpha N(t)\beta n^2(r,t)\text{d}^3r+𝒪(n^3).$$
(1)
The experimental fluorescence data is fitted to a solution of this equation. No absolute calibration of the atom number is required for the determination of the decay constant $`\alpha `$. In Fig. 1, non-exponential two-body decay due to intra-trap collisions can be seen during the first 30 seconds. Two-body losses depend on the integral over the local number density $`n(r,t)`$ and are described by the parameter $`\beta `$, the absolute determination of which would require an absolute calibration of $`n(r,t)`$, which is not the scope of this work. An uncalibrated value of $`\beta `$, however, is determined in our fitting procedure. For all data runs no contributions of order $`n^3`$ or higher could be observed.

At low atom numbers the decay is dominated by one-body losses with rate

$$\alpha =\frac{1}{\tau _2}\left(1\pi _3\right)+\frac{1}{\tau _3}\pi _3+\gamma p+.$$
(2)
The parameter $`\pi _3`$ gives the population in the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{3}^{}`$-state. Thus $`(1\pi _3)N`$ atoms decay from the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$-state with lifetime $`\tau _2`$. The combined rate for all decay channels from the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{3}^{}`$-state other than the transition to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$-state (see Fig. 2) is given by $`\tau _3^1`$. Background collisions contribute with a rate of $`\gamma p`$ MOT1  with $`p`$ being the pressure in the vacuum chamber and $`\gamma `$ being a constant depending on the atomic and molecular species present. The parameter $``$ summarizes possible MOT losses. The main objective of this work is to determine the lifetime $`\tau _2`$ from the observed decay rates $`\alpha `$ by extrapolating to vanishing excitation ($`\pi _3=0`$), background pressure ($`p=0`$), and MOT losses ($`=0`$). Achieving optimized starting conditions (small $`\pi _3`$ and $`p`$) and minimizing potential contributions of $``$ by a systematic analysis of the MOT characteristics have been essential.

Following MOT2 , the population $`\pi _3`$ is determined by:

$$\pi _3=\frac{1}{2}\frac{CI/I_0}{1+CI/I_0+\left(2\mathrm{\Delta }/\mathrm{\Gamma }\right)^2}.$$
(3)
with the total intensity $`I`$ of the MOT light fields, the saturation intensity $`I_0=\pi hc\mathrm{\Gamma }/3\lambda ^3=4.08\mathrm{mW}/\mathrm{cm}^2`$ (linewidth $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2\pi \times 8.18\mathrm{MHz}`$, $`\lambda =640.4\mathrm{nm}`$) and detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$. The phenomenological parameter $`C`$ accounts for the deviation of the effective total intensity in a three-dimensional MOT from a one-dimensional two-level system MOT2 . We adopt the notion of Beijerinck  and take $`C=0.7`$ with an uncertainty of $`0.3`$. The intensity $`I`$ is measured with an uncertainty of 10 %, the detuning $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ with an absolute uncertainty of $`1\mathrm{MHz}`$. Therefore, for all data presented here the uncertainty in $`C`$ is the dominant contribution to the uncertainty in $`\pi _3`$.

The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 3. A collimated beam of metastable atoms is decelerated in a Zeeman-slower with the slowing laser beam passing through the center of the MOT. The MOT light field consists of six individual beams (diameter $`22\text{mm}`$) with spatially filtered beam profiles. All light fields are derived from a dye laser which is frequency stabilized to a neon RF-discharge.

For each run, the MOT is loaded for $`400\mathrm{ms}`$ reaching a number of up to $`4\times 10^8`$ atoms, a maximum collision-limited density on the order of $`1\times 10^9\mathrm{cm}^3`$ and a typical temperature below 1 mK. Then, the loading process is terminated by blocking the atomic beam and the slowing laser beam by mechanical shutters, and by switching off the magnetic field of the Zeeman slower. In the following measurement period of two minutes, the fluorescence of the trapped atoms is recorded by a CCD camera capturing five image frames per second. Fluorescence decay curves are obtained by integrating the counts of each frame over the region where atoms are present. Great care has been taken to eliminate the influence of residual stray light. The decay curves span up to four orders of magnitude in signal. Fig. 1 shows two sets of data taken for different values of $`\pi _3`$. For $`\pi _3=0.005`$ a decay rate of $`\alpha =0.06929(48)\mathrm{s}^1`$ and a respective decay time of $`\alpha ^1=14.43\mathrm{s}`$ is observed.

In the following sections we describe our procedure to extrapolate the observed decay rate $`\alpha `$ to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ decay rate $`\tau _2^1`$. For the extrapolation of $`\alpha `$ to vanishing background pressure a systematic investigation of the MOT decay as a function of pressure has been carried out (Fig. 4(a)). The pressure is given as the nominal reading of the vacuum gauge (Balzers IKR070). The specific composition of the background gas is not known. However, we could observe a linear dependence of $`\alpha `$ on pressure over a range of almost two orders of magnitude, indicating a pressure-independent composition of the background gas. From a linear fit for data taken for $`\pi _3<0.1`$, we can determine the slope $`\gamma =5.2(1)\times 10^7\mathrm{mbar}^1\mathrm{s}^1`$. As a special feature of our setup, we can directly determine a possible offset by simultaneously measuring the fluorescence and the rate of ions produced by collisions using a multichannel plate (MCP) ion detector. Under typical operating conditions we detect ions of different origin: (a) Ne+-ions originating from intra-trap collisions (rate $`n^2(r,t)\text{d}^3r`$). (b) Ions which originate from collisions of metastable neon atoms with residual gas constituents (rate $`N(t)\times p`$). Thus, the ion count rate $`R_{\mathrm{ion}}(t)`$ can be modelled by

$$R_{\mathrm{ion}}(t)=c_1N(t)+c_2n^2(r,t)\text{d}^3r,$$
(4)
where $`c_1`$ is assumed to be proportional to $`p`$. The values of $`c_1`$ obtained for different pressures are shown in Fig. 4(b). From a linear fit we can determine the offset of the pressure gauge reading to $`(4\pm 7)\times 10^{12}\mathrm{mbar}`$ also allowing for a vanishing offset. By combining the results for $`\gamma `$ and the offset, we can extrapolate the observed decay rates to $`p=0`$. Due to the already low background pressure for our decay measurements only small corrections arise: At $`p=5\times 10^{11}\mathrm{mbar}`$ the background collision rate of $`\gamma p=1/(420\mathrm{s})`$ is more than a factor of 25 smaller than the observed decay rate $`\alpha `$.

We also investigated the possibility of additional atom losses from the MOT (contribution $``$ in Eq. (2)) attributed to a finite trap depth $`U_0`$ or finite escape velocity $`v_e`$ Weiner . We assume that a lossless MOT would result from an infinite trapping volume leading to infinite $`U_0`$ and $`v_e`$. In principle, this could be achieved for the applied magnetic field gradient $`B^{}`$ approaching zero if the MOT beams could be made infinitely large. In all practical implementations the trap depth will remain finite due to the finite size of the laser beams. Thus, for a given beam geometry, a variation in $`B^{}`$ should allow to investigate the MOT stability and to quantify the MOT losses $``$ which include diffusive motion out of the trapping volume Willems  leading to an exponentially decreasing loss rate with increasing trap depth and non-ionizing background gas collisions MOT1  already being accounted for by the $`p0`$ extrapolation. The influence of the magnetic field gradient on the measured decay rate $`\alpha `$ is shown in Fig. 5 for two values of $`\pi _3=0.016`$ and $`0.41`$, respectively.

In the most relevant case of small $`\pi _3`$ (Fig. 5(a)), for sufficiently large $`B^{}>10\mathrm{G}/\mathrm{cm}`$ a variation of $`B^{}`$ does affect the measured $`\alpha `$ not more than the uncertainties obtained from the fit. Thus we conclude that for our operating regime (shaded region in Fig. 5(a)) the trap depth $`U_0`$ and escape velocity $`v_e`$ are sufficiently large and that potential MOT loss contributions to the decay rate $`\alpha `$ are not significant. For large $`\pi _3`$ (Fig. 5(b)), a variation of the MOT stability with $`B^{}`$ is observed. Unfortunately, no quantitative model of the MOT at high saturation exists, the application of the loss models discussed above is not straightforward, and only a minimum and a maximum estimate of $``$ can be given: Since our decay data for large $`\pi _3`$ have been taken at $`B^{}=1.5\mathrm{G}/\mathrm{cm}`$ which gives the best MOT stability, it is not clear whether MOT losses have a significant contribution on the determination of $`\alpha `$ at all. On the other hand, a linear extrapolation of $`\alpha `$ to $`B^{}=0`$ should overestimate the corrections to be made Willems ; MOT1  giving $`=0.005(2)\mathrm{s}^1`$ as an upper limit. Losses for large $`\pi _3`$ only influence the $`\pi _30`$ extrapolation which we take into account by incorporating $`0\mathrm{s}^1<<0.005\mathrm{s}^1`$ into the uncertainties of this extrapolation.

After this systematic study of the influence of background collisions and MOT losses the determination of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetime $`\tau _2`$ can be obtained by extrapolating the measured decay rates to vanishing population $`\pi _3`$. Only data for a pressure below $`5\times 10^{11}\text{mbar}`$ are considered and an extrapolation to $`p=0`$ is performed. The dependence of $`\alpha _{p=0}`$ on $`\pi _3`$ is shown in Fig. 6 exhibiting a simple linear behavior. Displayed uncertainties in $`\alpha _{p=0}`$ are given by the combined uncertainties in the fit of $`\alpha `$ and uncertainties in the $`p0`$ extrapolation. To minimize uncertainties in the $`\pi _30`$ extrapolation, only data sets for $`\pi _3<0.05`$ and $`\pi _3>0.4`$ showing the smallest absolute uncertainties in $`\pi _3`$ have been included. The final value of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetime and decay rate are $`\tau _2=14.70(13)\mathrm{s}`$ and $`\tau _2^1=0.06801(62)\mathrm{s}`$, respectively . Table 1 gives a summary of contributions and uncertainties for these values. Since stable MOT conditions are directly accessible for $`\pi _3=0.005`$ and $`p<5\times 10^{11}\text{mbar}`$ only unprecedented small corrections are required. The final value for $`\tau _2`$ only deviates from the uncorrected value of $`\alpha ^1=14.43\mathrm{s}`$ by 2 %.

In addition to this result, extrapolating $`\alpha _{p=0}`$ to $`\pi _3=1`$, that is to a hypothetical total population transfer to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{3}^{}`$-state, is also possible. From this, we gain the first experimentally determined lower limit of $`\tau _359\mathrm{s}`$ for the combined rate $`\tau _3^1`$ of decay of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{D}_{3}^{}`$-state via all channels except the direct decay to the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ state. However, this value depends sensitively on the $``$-correction applied for large $`\pi _3`$ and only the stated lower limit is accessible.

To conclude we would like to compare our result of $`\tau _2=14.70(13)\mathrm{s}`$ to theoretical values obtained by different atomic structure calculations. Prior to our work, published theoretical values were given in Small  to 24.4 s, which can be rescaled to 20.0 s using more accurate input parameters, and in Kim2  to 22 s. Significant remaining discrepancies initiated a reexamination of atomic structure calculations for the whole set of $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetimes of rare-gas atoms. A preliminary result based on a multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock calculation gives a value of 18.9 s for neon Kim . A high degree of sensitivity to the included electron correlations has been found. Theoretical values are still expected to be larger than the experimental value, since the inclusion of additional electron correlations should further reduce the calculated lifetime. Refined calculations are forthcoming Kim . Most recent ab-initio calculations using MCHF methods give a lifetime of $`16.9\mathrm{s}`$ FroeseFischer . Considering the combined progress in experiment and theory, we anticipate that the determination of the $`{}_{}{}^{3}\mathrm{P}_{2}^{}`$ lifetime of neon may continue to serve as an important test for precision atomic structure calculations in the future.

We thank Y.-K. Kim for valuable discussions and are grateful for financial support by the DFG within the Schwerpunktprogramm SPP 1116.