Anisotropies in nonthermal distortions of cosmic light from photon-axion conversion

Ultralight axions which couple sufficiently strongly to photons can leave imprints on the sky at diverse frequencies by mixing with cosmic light in the presence of background magnetic fields. We explore such direction dependent grey-body distortions of the cosmic microwave background spectrum, enhanced by resonant conditions in the intergalactic medium plasma. We also find that if such axions are produced in the early Universe and represent a subdominant dark radiation component today, they could convert into x-rays in supervoids and brighten them at x-ray frequencies.

Figure 1

Plot of the function $(1-e^{-x})/x$, as a function of the frequency in GHz. The points correspond to the central values of the Planck frequency bands.