On a possible nonequilibrium imprint in the cosmic background at low frequencies

Abstract

The cosmic background radiation has been observed to deviate from the Planck law expected from a blackbody at $\sim$ 2.7 K at frequencies below $\sim 3$ GHz. We discuss the abundance of the low-energy photons from the perspective of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. We propose a mechanism of stochastic frequency-diffusion, the counterpart to stochastic acceleration for charged particles in a turbulent plasma, to modify the standard Kompaneets equation. The resulting violation of the Einstein relation allows to take advantage of low-frequency localization and finally leads to photon cooling. The new equation predicts a frequency distribution in agreement with the absolute temperature measurements of the cosmic background radiation down to about 20 MHz, for which we offer here an updated compilation. In that sense, the so called 'space roar' we observe today is interpreted as a nonequilibrium echo of the early universe, and of nonequilibrium conditions in the primordial plasma more specifically.

arXiv comment14 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Figure 2 replaced to fix a mistake due to an exchange of files: the printed version is now accompanied by an Erratum

References in corpus (46)

• The Cosmic Microwave Background Spectrum from the Full COBE/FIRAS Data Set
• In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe
• The Temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• An absorption profile centred at 78 megahertz in the sky-averaged spectrum
• Weak Gravitational Lensing of the CMB
• Energy flow, partial equilibration and effective temperatures in systems with slow dynamics
• Planck 2018 results. VIII. Gravitational lensing
• Possible interaction between baryons and dark-matter particles revealed by the first stars
• The evolution of CMB spectral distortions in the early Universe
• ARCADE 2 Measurement of the Extra-Galactic Sky Temperature at 3-90 GHz
• Enhanced global signal of neutral hydrogen due to excess radiation at cosmic dawn
• Concerns about Modelling of the EDGES Data
• Modeling the Radio Background from the First Black Holes at Cosmic Dawn: Implications for the 21 cm Absorption Amplitude
• The radio emission from the Galaxy at 22 MHz
• Non-equilibrium and information: the role of cross-correlations
• The Radio Background Below 100 MHz
• The redshifted 21-cm signal in the EDGES low-band spectrum
• Deep 3 GHz Number Counts from a P(D) Fluctuation Analysis
• The contribution of the Unresolved Extragalactic Radio Sources to the Brightness Temperature of the sky
• A dark matter interpretation for the ARCADE excess?
• Unavoidable CMB spectral features and blackbody photosphere of our Universe
• The Lockman Hole Project: new constraints on the sub-mJy source counts from a wide-area 1.4 GHz mosaic
• Observational Signatures of the First Luminous Objects
• Is there an unaccounted excess Extragalactic Cosmic Radio Background?
• Deep 3 GHz Observations of the Lockman Hole North with the Very Large Array -2. Catalogue and μJy source properties
• TRIS II: search for CMB spectral distortions at 0.60, 0.82 and 2.5 GHz
• Effective temperatures of hot Brownian motion
• Astrophysical radio background cannot explain the EDGES 21-cm signal: constraints from cooling of non-thermal electrons
• Dynamical freezing of relaxation to equilibrium
• Out-of-equilibrium collective oscillation as phonon condensation in a model protein
• Classical motion in force fields with short range correlations
• Effects of breaking vibrational energy equipartition on measurements of temperature in macroscopic oscillators subject to heat flux
• Cosmic backgrounds due to the formation of the first generation of supermassive black holes
• Nonequilibrium Response and Frenesy
• Non-equilibrium steady states for chains of four rotors
• A joint study of early and late spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background and of the millimetric foreground
• Heat bounds and the blowtorch theorem
• Semi-analytical description of clumping factor and CMB free-free distortions from reionization
• Energy repartition for a harmonic chain with local reservoirs
• Deep LOFAR 150 MHz imaging of the Boötes field: Unveiling the faint low-frequency sky
• Measuring effective temperatures in out-of-equilibrium driven systems
• On the effect of cyclotron emission on the spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background
• Energy Dissipation in Hamiltonian Chains of Rotators
• Producing suprathermal tails in the stationary velocity distribution
• Avalanche Photon Cooling by Induced Compton Scattering: Higher-Order Kompaneets Equation
• Black Hole High Mass X-ray Binary Microquasars at Cosmic Dawn

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Coexistence of ballistic and Fourier regimes in the $\beta$-FPUT lattice
• Frequency-redshift relation of the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Active velocity processes with suprathermal stationary distributions and long-time tails
• Effects of observer peculiar motion on the isotropic background frequency spectrum: from monopole to higher multipoles
• Resetting photons
• Photon frequency diffusion process