Constraining dark photons and their connection to 21 cm cosmology with CMB data

Understand

In the inhomogeneous Universe, the cosmological conversion of dark photons into ordinary photons (and vice versa) may happen at a great number of resonance redshifts.

• This alters the CMB observed energy spectrum and degree of small-scale anisotropies.
• We utilize results from the EAGLE simulation to obtain the conversion probability along random line-of-sights to quantify these effects.
• We then apply our results to the case where dark photons are sourced by dark matter decay and their high-redshift conversion into ordinary photons modify the global 21 cm signal expected from the cosmic dawn era.