Constraints on non-resonant photon-axion conversion from the Planck satellite data

Abstract

The non-resonant conversion of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons into scalar as well as light pseudoscalar particles such as axion-like particles (ALPs) in the presence of turbulent magnetic fields can cause a unique, spatially fluctuating spectral distortion in the CMB. We use the publicly available Planck temperature maps for the frequency channels (70-545 GHz) to obtain the first ALP distortion map using $45\%$ clean part of the sky. The $95^{th}$ percentile upper limit on the RMS fluctuation of ALP distortions from the cleanest part of the CMB sky at $15$ arcmin angular resolution is $18.5 \times 10^{-6}$. The RMS fluctuation in the distortion map is also consistent with different combinations of frequency channels and sky-fractions.