English

Missing dust signature in the cosmic microwave background

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2017-06-16 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

I examine a possible spectral distortion of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) due to its absorption by galactic and intergalactic dust. I show that even subtle intergalactic opacity of 1×107maghGpc11 \times 10^{-7}\, \mathrm{mag}\, h\, \mathrm{Gpc}^{-1} at the CMB wavelengths in the local Universe causes non-negligible CMB absorption and decline of the CMB intensity because the opacity steeply increases with redshift. The CMB should be distorted even during the epoch of the Universe defined by redshifts z<10z < 10. For this epoch, the maximum spectral distortion of the CMB is at least 20×1022Wm2Hz1sr120 \times 10^{-22} \,\mathrm{Wm}^{-2}\, \mathrm{Hz}^{-1}\, \mathrm{sr}^{-1} at 300 GHz being well above the sensitivity of the COBE/FIRAS, WMAP or Planck flux measurements. If dust mass is considered to be redshift dependent with noticeable dust abundance at redshifts 2-4, the predicted CMB distortion is even higher. The CMB would be distorted also in a perfectly transparent universe due to dust in galaxies but this effect is lower by one order than that due to intergalactic opacity. The fact that the distortion of the CMB by dust is not observed is intriguing and questions either opacity and extinction law measurements or validity of the current model of the Universe.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.04771,
  title  = {Missing dust signature in the cosmic microwave background},
  author = {Vaclav Vavrycuk},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.04771},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:19:29.119Z