On a parity property in the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect

Abstract

The main issue in this paper is to discuss a parity property that appears in the expressions for the distorted spectrum of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. When using the convolution integrals method involving scattering laws we argue that the distorted spectrum contains a new term, which is an odd power of the frequency. Such a term, absent in the conventional approaches, implies a crossover frequency which differs in value form the ones reported in the literature by a significant, in principle observable, amount. Also, such term casts doubt on the demanding need of computing complicated relativistic calculations. The relationship of our approach with the existing calculations is discussed.