Effective photon mass and (dark) photon conversion in the inhomogeneous
  Universe
  Photons traveling cosmological distances through the inhomogeneous Universe
experience a great variation in their in-medium induced effective mass. Using
the EAGLE suite of hydrodynamical simulations, we infer the free electron
distribution and thereby the effective photon mass after reionization. We use
this data to study the inter-conversion of kinetically mixed photons and dark
photons, which may occur at a great number of resonance redshifts, and obtain
the "optical depth" against conversion along random lines-of-sight. Using
COBE/FIRAS, Planck, and SPT measurements, we constrain the dark photon
parameter space from the depletion of CMB photons into dark photons that causes
both spectral distortions and additional anisotropies in the CMB. Finally, we
also consider the conversion of sub-eV dark radiation into ordinary photons. We
make the line-of-sight distributions of both, free electrons and dark matter,
publicly available.
