Papers › Constraints on axions from patchy screening of the cosmic microwave background
Constraints on axions from patchy screening of the cosmic microwave background
Samuel Goldstein, Fiona McCarthy, Cristina Mondino, J. Colin Hill, Junwu Huang, Matthew C. Johnson
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The resonant conversion of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons into axions within large-scale structure induces an anisotropic spectral distortion in CMB temperature maps. Applying state-of-the-art foreground cleaning techniques to Planck CMB observations, we construct maps of axion-induced "patchy screening" of the CMB. We cross-correlate these maps with data from the unWISE galaxy survey and find no evidence of axions. We constrain the axion-photon coupling, gₐᵧᵧ ≲2 ×10⁻¹² GeV⁻¹, at the 95% confidence level for axion masses in the range 10⁻¹³ eV ≲mₐ ≲10⁻¹² eV. These constraints are competitive with the tightest astrophysical axion limits in this mass range and are inferred from robust population-level statistics, which makes them complementary to existing searches that rely on modeling of individual systems.
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