Searching for axion-like particle decay in the near-infrared background: an updated analysis

Abstract

The extragalactic background light is comprised of the cumulative radiation from all galaxies across the history of the universe. The angular power spectrum of the anisotropies of such a background at near-infrared (IR) frequencies lacks of a complete understanding and shows a robust excess which cannot be easily explained with known sources. Dark matter in the form of axion-like particles (ALPs) with a mass around the electronvolt will decay into two photons with wavelengths in the near-IR band, possibly contributing to the background intensity. We compute the near-IR background angular power spectrum including emissions from galaxies, as well as the contributions from the intra-halo light and ALP decay, and compare it to measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer. We find that the preferred values for the ALP mass and ALP-photon coupling to explain the excess are in tension with star cooling data and observations of dwarf spheroidal galaxies.

Appendices added; version published in JCAP

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Cited by in corpus (13)

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• Indirect Detection of eV Dark Matter via Infrared Spectroscopy
• Cosmic Near-infrared Background Tomography with SPHEREx Using Galaxy Cross-correlations
• Thermal axions with multi-eV masses are possible in low-reheating scenarios
• Seeking dark matter with $\gamma$-ray attenuation
• Thermal production of cold "hot dark matter" around eV
• Got plenty of nothing: cosmic voids as a probe of particle dark matter
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• Prospects of additional contribution at Optical-NIR band of EBL in the light of VHE spectra