Spectral Distortion of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation by Scattering on Hot Electrons: Exact Calculations

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Abstract
The spectral distortion of the cosmic microwave background radiation produced by the inverse Compton scattering on hot electrons in clusters of galaxies (thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect) is calculated for arbitrary optical depth and electron temperature. The distortion is found by a numerical solution of the exact Boltzmann equation for the photon distribution function. In the limit of small optical depth and low electron temperature, our results confirm the previous analyses. In the opposite limits, our method is the only one that permits us to make accurate calculations.