A Limit on Primordial Small-Scale Magnetic Fields from CMB Distortions
Astrophysics
2009-10-31 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Abstract
Spatially varying primordial magnetic fields may be efficiently dissipated prior to the epoch of recombination due to the large viscosity of the baryon-photon fluid. We show that this dissipation may result in observable chemical potential mu and Compton y distortions in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) spectrum. Current upper limits on mu and y from FIRAS constrain magnetic fields to have strength B_0 < 3\times 10^{-8}Gauss (scaled to the present) between comoving coherence length \approx 400 pc and \approx 0.6 Mpc. This represents the strongest upper limit on small-scale primordial magnetic fields to date.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9911100,
title = {A Limit on Primordial Small-Scale Magnetic Fields from CMB Distortions},
author = {K. Jedamzik and V. Katalinic and A. V. Olinto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9911100},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
5 pages, accepted by Physical Review Letters