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In the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, hot intracluster electrons transfer energy to cosmic microwave background photons by inverse Compton scattering. Their thermal energy is much larger than the CMB photon energy; in the nonrelativistic limit the mean fractional photon energy gain per scattering is about $4k_{B}T/(m_e{c}^2)$. Multiplication by the incremental Thomson scattering optical depth $d\tau ={\sigma }_T{n}_{e}dx$ explains why $y=\int [k_{B}T/(m_e{c}^2)]d\tau$ measures the electron pressure integrated along the line of sight. The result is a spectral distortion, with a low-frequency decrement and a high-frequency increment, rather than a positive additional emission component at every frequency.

For a uniform sphere, a line of sight at impact parameter $b$ has path length $2\sqrt{R^2-b^2}$. ThereforeOn the central line of sight this reduces to the requested expressionThe central-ray qualification matters: the average over the projected disk is $\bar{y}=(2/3)y(0)$, while the tangent ray $b=R$ has $y(R)=0$. Thus the printed formula does not hold for an arbitrary sightline. Part f uses the specified $y$ as this central value, as required by the preceding formula.