Improved Constraints on Cosmic Birefringence from the WMAP and Planck Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Data

2022/05/27 by Johannes R. Eskilt, Eiichiro Komatsu · 1 voice · 7 citations
#astro-ph.CO

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.106.063503

Abstract

The observed pattern of linear polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons is a sensitive probe of physics violating parity symmetry under inversion of spatial coordinates. A new parity-violating interaction might have rotated the plane of linear polarization by an angle β as the CMB photons have been traveling for more than 13 billion years. This effect is known as "cosmic birefringence." In this paper, we present new measurements of cosmic birefringence from a joint analysis of polarization data from two space missions, Planck and WMAP. This dataset covers a wide range of frequencies from 23 to 353 GHz. We measure β= 0.342^{∘ +0.094^∘}_\phantom∘ -0.091^∘ (68% C.L.) for nearly full-sky data, which excludes β=0 at 99.987% C.L. This corresponds to the statistical significance of 3.6σ. There is no evidence for frequency dependence of β. We find a similar result, albeit with a larger uncertainty, when removing the Galactic plane from the analysis.

Cited by

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• Nonlinear Evolution of the Matter Trispectrum with Primordial Parity Violation
• Search for Quintessence-Like Pseudoscalar Dark Energy Effects on ⁵⁶Fe Nuclear Transition Energies in Supernova 1991T
• Sign-Flipping Axion Potentials via Kapitza-Type Modulation by Heavy Axions
• Testing the Heterotic String with the Axion-Photon Coupling
• Scalar induced gravitational waves in PV symmetric teleparallel gravity with non-minimally coupled boundary term
• Field-level constraints on cosmic birefringence from hybrid ILC maps combining E- and B-mode channels

Discussions

• Although #ACT DR6s headline is that LCDM is still king, they do find a 2.5 sigma of an unexplained polarization angle (aka cosmic birefringence)! I am amazed that people are not more excited by this! [bsky, 6 points, 1 comments]

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• Constraints on Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence from CMB B-mode Polarization
• Planck constraints on Cosmic Birefringence and its cross-correlation with the CMB
• Planck PR4 (NPIPE) map-space cosmic birefringence