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In cosmology, decoupling refers to a period in the development of the universe when different types of particles fall out of thermal equilibrium with each other. This occurs as a result of the expansion of the universe, as their interaction rates decrease (and mean free paths increase) up to this critical point. The two verified instances of decoupling since the Big Bang which are most often discussed are photon decoupling and neutrino decoupling, as these led to the cosmic microwave background and cosmic neutrino background, respectively. ==Photon decoupling== (詳細はepoch known as the recombination. During this time, electrons combined with protons to form hydrogen atoms, resulting in a sudden drop in free electron density. Decoupling occurred abruptly when the rate of Compton scattering of photons was approximately equal to the rate of expansion of the universe , or alternatively when the mean free path of the photons was approximately equal to the horizon size of the universe . After this photons were able to stream freely, producing the cosmic microwave background as we know it, and the universe became transparent. The interaction rate of the photons is given by : where is the electron number density, is the electron cross sectional area, and is the speed of light. In the matter-dominated era (when recombination takes place), : where is the cosmic scale factor. also decreases as a more complicated function of , at a faster rate than . By working out the precise dependence of and on the scale factor and equating , it is possible to show that photon decoupling occurred approximately 380,000 years after the Big Bang, at a redshift of when the universe was at a temperature around 3000 K. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Decoupling (cosmology)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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