Abstract: Dark photon dark matter will resonantly convert into visible photons when the dark photon mass is equal to the plasma frequency of the ambient medium. In cosmological contexts, this transition leads to an extremely efficient, albeit short-lived, heating of the surrounding gas. Existing work in this field has been predominantly focused on understanding the implications of these resonant transitions in the limit that the plasma frequency of the Universe can be treated as being perfectly homogeneous, i.e. neglecting inhomogeneities in the electron number density. In this work we focus on the implications of heating from dark photon dark matter in the presence of inhomogeneous structure (which is particularly relevant for dark photons with masses in the range 10(-15) eV less than or similar to m(A ') less than or similar to 10(-12) eV), emphasizing both the importance of inhomogeneous energy injection, as well as the sensitivity of cosmological observations to the inhomogeneities themselves. More specifically, we derive modified constraints on dark photon dark matter from the Ly-alpha forest, and show that the presence of inhomogeneities allows one to extend constraints to masses outside of the range that would be obtainable in the homogeneous limit, while only slightly relaxing their strength. We then project sensitivity for near-future cosmological surveys that are hoping to measure the 21cm transition in neutral hydrogen prior to reionization, and demonstrate that these experiments will be extremely useful in improving sensitivity to masses near similar to 10(-14) eV, potentially by several orders of magnitude. Finally, we discuss implications for reionization, early star formation, and late-time y-type spectral distortions, and show that probes which are inherently sensitive to the inhomogeneous state of the Universe could resolve signatures unique to the light dark photon dark matter scenario, and thus offer a fantastic potential for a positive detection.

Abstract: Light axions (m(a) less than or similar to 10(-10) eV) can form dense clouds around rapidly rotating astrophysical black holes via a mechanism known as rotational superradiance. The coupling between axions and photons induces a parametric resonance, arising from the stimulated decay of the axion cloud, which can rapidly convert regions of large axion number densities into an enormous flux of low-energy photons. In this work we consider the phenomenological implications of a superradiant axion cloud undergoing resonant decay. We show that the low-energy photons produced from such events will be absorbed over cosmologically short distances, potentially inducing massive shockwaves that heat and ionize the intergalactic medium over Mpc scales. These shockwaves may leave observable imprints in the form of anisotropic spectral distortions or inhomogeneous features in the optical depth.

Abstract: Collapsing supermassive stars (M greater than or similar to 3 x 10(4) M-circle dot) at high redshifts can naturally provide seeds and explain the origin of the supermassive black holes observed in the centers of nearly all galaxies. During the collapse of supermassive stars, a burst of non-thermal neutrinos is generated with a luminosity that could greatly exceed that of a conventional core collapse supernova explosion. In this work, we investigate the extent to which the neutrinos produced in these explosions can be observed via coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering (CEvNS). Large scale direct dark matter detection experiments provide particularly favorable targets. We find that upcoming O(100) tonne-scale experiments will be sensitive to the collapse of individual supermassive stars at distances as large as O(10) Mpc.