Relaxation versus collision times in the cosmological radiative era

Abstract

We consider the Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi metric with an inhomogeneous viscous fluid source satisfying the equation of state of an interactive mixture of radiation and matter. Assuming conditions;prior to the decoupling era, we apply extended irreversible thermodynamics (EIT) to this mixture. Using the full transport equation of EIT we show that the relaxation time of shear viscosity can be several orders of magnitude larger than the Thomson collision time between photons and electrons. A comparison with the 'truncated' transport equation for these models reveals that the latter cannot properly describe the decoupling of matter and radiation.