English

Thermal photon dispersion law and modified black-body spectra

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-09-29 v2

Abstract

Based on the postulate that photon propagation is governed by an SU(2) gauge principle we numerically compute the one-loop dispersion for thermalized photon propagation on the radiatively induced mass shell. Formerly, the dispersion was addressed by assuming p2=0p^2=0. While this approximation turns out to be excellent for temperatures 2TCMB\le 2 T_{\tiny{CMB}} the exact result exhibits a much faster (power-like) shrinking of the gap in the black-body spectral intensity with rising temperature. Our previous statements on anomalous large-angle CMB temperature-temperature correlations, obtained in the approximation p2=0p^2=0, remain valid.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.0972,
  title  = {Thermal photon dispersion law and modified black-body spectra},
  author = {Josef Ludescher and Ralf Hofmann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.0972},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

v2: 13 pages, 6 figures; sec. 2.1. added to explain effective theory; references added; matches journal published version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:47:49.561Z