Infrared Sensitivity of Cosmological Probes In The Presence of Axion Field Fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how long wavelength axion field fluctuations influence cosmological measurements, finding they significantly affect CMB anisotropies but are less impactful on late-time observables, with implications for cosmic tensions.

Contribution

It introduces a position-space analysis of back-reaction effects from axion fluctuations on cosmological probes, highlighting their limited role in resolving the Hubble tension.

Findings

Back-reaction effects peak at matter-radiation equality

Impact on CMB anisotropies is significant

Effects on late-time observables are suppressed

Abstract

We study the effects of long wavelength entropy fluctuations on cosmological probes such as galaxy clustering, luminosity distance, and CMB temperature anisotropies. Specifically, we consider fluctuations of a massless spectator scalar field set up in the early universe, which later acquires mass during the radiation-dominated era. We find that there are non-vanishing effects on observables, and the amplitude of these effects peaks for observables set up at the time of equal matter and radiation, and decreases as $\eta^{-2}$ where $\eta$ is the conformal time. Hence, the back-reaction effects are important for CMB anisotropies, but their impact on late-time observables is suppressed. In particular, the back-reaction effects are unable to explain the Hubble tension while they might alleviate the cosmic dipole tension. In contrast to a lot of the previous work on back-reaction, we work in position rather than momentum space.