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Cosmic-void observations reconciled with primordial magnetogenesis.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


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Authors

Schekochihin, Alexander A 

Abstract

It has been suggested that the weak magnetic field hosted by the intergalactic medium in cosmic voids could be a relic from the early Universe. However, accepted models of turbulent magnetohydrodynamic decay predict that the present-day strength of fields originally generated at the electroweak phase transition (EWPT) without parity violation would be too low to explain the observed scattering of γ-rays from TeV blazars. Here, we propose that the decay is mediated by magnetic reconnection and conserves the mean square fluctuation level of magnetic helicity. We find that the relic fields would be stronger by several orders of magnitude under this theory than was indicated by previous treatments, which restores the consistency of the EWPT-relic hypothesis with the observational constraints. Moreover, efficient EWPT magnetogenesis would produce relics at the strength required to resolve the Hubble tension via magnetic effects at recombination and seed galaxy-cluster fields close to their present-day strength.

Description

Keywords

5106 Nuclear and Plasma Physics, 5107 Particle and High Energy Physics, 5101 Astronomical Sciences, 51 Physical Sciences

Journal Title

Nat Commun

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2041-1723
2041-1723

Volume Title

14

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC