Abstract
ABSTRACT Infrared emission from intergalactic dust might compromise the ability of future experiments to detect subtle spectral distortions in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the early universe. We provide the first estimate of foreground contamination of the CMB signal due to diffuse dust emission in the intergalactic medium. We use models of the extragalactic background light to calculate the intensity of intergalactic dust emission and find that emission by intergalactic dust at z ≲ 0.5 exceeds the sensitivity of the planned Primordial Inflation Explorer to CMB spectral distortions by 1–3 orders of magnitude. In the frequency range ν = 150–2400 GHz, we place an upper limit of 0.06% on the contribution to the far-infrared background from intergalactic dust emission.
Highlights
We use models of the extragalactic background light to calculate the intensity of intergalactic dust emission and find that emission by intergalactic dust at redshifts z 0.5 exceeds the sensitivity of the planned Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) to Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) spectral distortions by 1–3 orders of magnitude
We discuss the assumptions that influence our results (§3.1), and we forecast how the foreground emission due to intergalactic dust compares with the CMB spectral distortions that PIXIE and other future experiments hope to detect (§3.2)
There is a treasure trove of information to be harvested from the CMB spectrum
Summary
The standard model of cosmology predicts small distortions in the Planckian spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) due to processes that heat, cool, scatter, and generate CMB photons over the history of the Universe; Sunyaev & Zeldovich 1970; Zeldovich & Sunyaev 1969; Sunyaev & Zeldovich 1970; Illarionov & Sunyaev 1975; Hu & Silk 1993; Burigana & Salvaterra 2003; Sunyaev & Chluba 2009; Chluba & Sunyaev 2012; Sunyaev & Khatri 2013). A main goal in astrophysical cosmology has been to determine precisely how much the CMB departs from a perfect blackbody spectrum. Observations of such spectral distortions would help constrain inflationary models and yield other important information about the early history of the Universe, including recombination of hydrogen and helium at redshifts z ∼ 1100–6000, the formation of the first stars, and the epoch of reionization (e.g., Chluba & Sunyaev 2012; Chluba et al 2012; Chluba 2013, 2016; Chluba & Jeong 2014; Sunyaev & Khatri 2013). By z 106, energy released into the Universe was capable of generating deviations, or distortions, into the CMB spectrum that may be observed today
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