Probing the Blue Axion with Cosmic Optical Background Anisotropies

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Carenza, Pierluca, Lucente, Giuseppe, Vitagliano, Edoardo
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Carenza, Pierluca
Lucente, Giuseppe
Vitagliano, Edoardo
author_facet Carenza, Pierluca
Lucente, Giuseppe
Vitagliano, Edoardo
contents A radiative decaying Big Bang relic with a mass $m_a\simeq 5-25 \,\rm eV$, which we dub "blue axion", can be probed with direct and indirect observations of the cosmic optical background (COB). The strongest bounds on blue-axion cold dark matter come from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) measurements of COB anisotropies at $606$~nm. We suggest that new HST measurements at higher frequencies ($336$~nm and $438$~nm) can improve current constraints on the lifetime up to one order of magnitude, and we show that also thermally produced and hot relic blue axions can be competitively probed by COB anisotropies. We exclude the simple interpretation of the excess in the diffuse COB detected by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as photons produced by a decaying hot relic. Finally, we comment on the reach of upcoming line intensity mapping experiments, that could detect blue axions with a lifetime as large as $10^{29}\,\rm s$ or $10^{27}\,\rm s$ for the cold dark matter and the hot relic case, respectively.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2301_06560
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Probing the Blue Axion with Cosmic Optical Background Anisotropies
Carenza, Pierluca
Lucente, Giuseppe
Vitagliano, Edoardo
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
A radiative decaying Big Bang relic with a mass $m_a\simeq 5-25 \,\rm eV$, which we dub "blue axion", can be probed with direct and indirect observations of the cosmic optical background (COB). The strongest bounds on blue-axion cold dark matter come from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) measurements of COB anisotropies at $606$~nm. We suggest that new HST measurements at higher frequencies ($336$~nm and $438$~nm) can improve current constraints on the lifetime up to one order of magnitude, and we show that also thermally produced and hot relic blue axions can be competitively probed by COB anisotropies. We exclude the simple interpretation of the excess in the diffuse COB detected by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) as photons produced by a decaying hot relic. Finally, we comment on the reach of upcoming line intensity mapping experiments, that could detect blue axions with a lifetime as large as $10^{29}\,\rm s$ or $10^{27}\,\rm s$ for the cold dark matter and the hot relic case, respectively.
title Probing the Blue Axion with Cosmic Optical Background Anisotropies
topic High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.06560