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A Limit on Primordial Small-Scale Magnetic Fields from CMB Distortions

K. Jedamzik, V. Katalinic, A. V. Olinto

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/9911100

Abstract

Spatially varying primordial magnetic fields may be efficiently dissipated prior to the epoch of recombination due to the large viscosity of the baryon-photon fluid. We show that this dissipation may result in observable chemical potential mu and Compton y distortions in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) spectrum. Current upper limits on mu and y from FIRAS constrain magnetic fields to have strength B0 < 3× 10-8Gauss (scaled to the present) between comoving coherence length ≈ 400 pc and ≈ 0.6 Mpc. This represents the strongest upper limit on small-scale primordial magnetic fields to date.

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