Quasiadiabatic modes from viscous inhomogeneities

Abstract

The viscous inhomogeneities of a relativistic plasma determine a further class of entropic modes whose amplitude must be sufficiently small since curvature perturbations are observed to be predominantly adiabatic and Gaussian over large scales. When the viscous coefficients only depend on the energy density of the fluid the corresponding curvature fluctuations are shown to be almost adiabatic. After addressing the problem in a gauge-invariant perturbative expansion, the same analysis is repeated at a non-perturbative level by investigating the nonlinear curvature inhomogeneities induced by the spatial variation of the viscous coefficients. It is demonstrated that the quasiadiabatic modes are suppressed in comparison with a bona fide adiabatic solution. Because of its anomalously large tensor to scalar ratio the quasiadiabatic mode cannot be a substitute for the conventional adiabatic paradigm so that, ultimately, the present findings seems to exclude the possibility of a successful accelerated dynamics solely based on relativistic viscous fluids. If the dominant adiabatic mode is not affected by the viscosity of the background a sufficiently small fraction of entropic fluctuations of viscous origin cannot be a priori ruled out.