Speaker
Bryce Cyr
(McGill)
Description
We investigate the impact of a Chern-Simons coupling, an interaction that is naturally present due to symmetry considerations, between axions and electromagnetism in the early universe. The inclusion of this coupling induces a parametric resonance in the U(1) gauge field once the axion starts oscillating, generating an explosive amount of photon production. These resonantly produced photons are highly non-thermal, and so their production between redshifts of 10^6 and 10^3 can disturb the blackbody nature of the CMB resulting in a spectral distortion. We compute the induced spectral distortion via this process and comment on general constraints and limitations of this model.
Author
Bryce Cyr
(McGill)
