Resilience and implications of adiabatic CMB cooling

Abstract

We investigate potential deviations from the standard adiabatic evolution of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature, $T_{\mathrm{CMB}}(z)$, using the latest Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect measurements and molecular line excitation data, covering a combined redshift range of $0<z\lesssim 6$. We follow different approaches. First, we reconstruct the redshift evolution of $T_{\mathrm{CMB}}(z)$ in a model-independent way using Gaussian Process regression. The tightest constraints come from SZ measurements at $z<1$, while molecular line data at $z>3$ yield broader uncertainties. By combining both datasets, we find good consistency with the standard evolution across the full analysed redshift range, inferring a present-day CMB monopole temperature of $T_0=2.744\pm 0.019$ K. Next, we test for deviations from the standard scaling by adopting the parameterisation $T_{\mathrm{CMB}}(z)=T_0(1+z{)}^{1-{\hat{I}}^2}$, where ${\hat{I}}^2$ quantifies departures from adiabaticity, with ${\hat{I}}^2=0$ corresponding to the standard scenario. In this framework, we use Gaussian Process reconstruction to test the consistency of ${\hat{I}}^2=0$ across the full redshift range and perform $\ddot{I}{‡}^2$ minimisation techniques to determine the best-fit values of $T_0$ and ${\hat{I}}^2$. In both cases, we find good consistency with the standard temperature-redshift relation. The $\ddot{I}{‡}^2$-minimisation analysis yields best-fit values of ${\hat{I}}^2=-0.0106\pm 0.0124$ and $T_0=2.7276\pm 0.0095$ K, in excellent agreement with both ${\hat{I}}^2=0$ and independent direct measurements of $T_0$ from FIRAS and ARCADE. We discuss the implications of our findings, which offer strong empirical support for the standard cosmological prediction and place tight constraints on a wide range of alternative scenarios of interest in the context of cosmological tensions and fundamental physics.

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