2020/08/31 by Tomohiro Fujita, Y. Minami, Yuto Minami +2 · 1 citation
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #COSMIC cancer database #Chemistry #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Microwave #Optics #Physics #Polarization (electrochemistry) #astro-ph.CO #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.103.063508
published as Phys. Rev. D 103, 063508 (2021) · 7 pages, 2 figures
openalex created_date 2020/08/10 · openalex publication_date 2021/03/10 · arxiv created 2021/03/11 · arxiv updated 2021/03/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Axionlike particles (ALPs) rotate the linear polarization of photons through the ALP-photon coupling and convert the cosmic microwave background (CMB) E mode to the B mode. We derive the relation between the ALP dynamics and the rotation angle by assuming that the ALP \ensuremathφ has a quadratic potential, V=m2\ensuremathφ2/2. We compute the current and future sensitivities of CMB observations to the ALP-photon coupling g, which can reach g=4\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-21 GeV^\ensuremath-1 for 10^\ensuremath-32 eV\ensuremath\lesssimm\ensuremath\lesssim10^\ensuremath-28 eV and extensively exceed the other searches for any mass m\ensuremath\lesssim10^\ensuremath-25 eV. We find that the fluctuation of the ALP field at the observer, which has been neglected in previous studies, can induce significant isotropic rotation of the CMB polarization. The measurements of isotropic and anisotropic rotation allow us to put bounds on relevant quantities, such as the ALP mass m and the ALP density parameter \mathrm\ensuremathΩ_\ensuremathφ. In particular, if LiteBIRD detects anisotropic rotation, we obtain the lower bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio as r>5\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi10^\ensuremath-9.