1998/02/09 by T. R. Seshadri, Kandaswamy Subramanian, K. Subramanian · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Anisotropy #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Atomic physics #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Electron #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Nuclear physics #Optics #Photon #Physics #Polarization (electrochemistry) #Quadrupole #Redshift #Reionization #Scattering #Thomson scattering #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.58.063002
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 58(6) (American Physical Society) · 13 pages, Revtex, no figures
arxiv created 1998/02/09 · openalex publication_date 1998/08/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Radiation which has a quadrupole component of anisotropy can get polarized by Thomson scattering from charged particles. In the cosmological context, the microwave background photons develop significant quadrupole anisotropy as they free stream away from the epoch of standard recombination. Reionization in the post recombination era can provide free electrons to Thomson scatter the incident anisotropic cosmic microwave background radiation photons. We compute the resulting polarization anisotropy on small (arc minute) angular scales. We look for significant nonlinear contributions, as in the case of the Vishniac effect in temperature anisotropy, due to the coupling of small-scale electron density fluctuations, at the new last scattering surface, and the temperature quadrupole. We show that while in cold dark matter type models this does not lead to very significant signals (\ensuremath∼0.02--0.04 \ensuremathμK) a larger small angular scale polarization anisotropy, (\ensuremath∼0.1--0.5 \ensuremathμK) can result in isocurvature-type models.