We propose a new mechanism by which dark matter (DM) can affect the early and late Universe. The hot interior of a macroscopic DM, or macro, can behave as a heat reservoir so that energetic photons and neutrinos are emitted from its surface and interior, respectively. In this paper, we focus on the spectral distortions (SDs) of the cosmic microwave background before recombination. The SDs depend on the density and the cooling processes of the interior and the surface composition of the macros. We use neutron stars as a model for nuclear-density macros and find that the spectral distortions are mass independent for a fixed density. In our work, we find that, for macros of this type that constitute 100% of the dark matter, the $\mu$ and $y$ distortions can be near or above the detection threshold for typical proposed next-generation experiments such as PIXIE.

• Received 3 May 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.99.023521