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Title: Current and Future Constraints on Primordial Magnetic Fields

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
 [1];  [2]; ORCiD logo [1]
  1. Univ. of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC (Australia). School of Physics
  2. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy

Here, we present new limits on the amplitude of potential primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) using temperature and polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from Planck, the BICEP2/Keck Array, Polarbear, and SPTpol. We reduce twofold the 95% confidence upper limit on the CMB anisotropy power due to a nearly scale-invariant PMF, with an allowed B-mode power at ℓ = 1500 of $${D}_{{\ell }=1500}^{\mathrm{BB}}\lt 0.071\,\mu {K}^{2}$$ for Planck versus $${D}_{{\ell }=1500}^{\mathrm{BB}}\lt 0.034\,\mu {K}^{2}$$ for the combined data set. We also forecast the expected limits from soon-to-deploy CMB experiments (like SPT-3G, Adv. ACTpol, or the Simons Array) and the proposed CMB-S4 experiment. Future CMB experiments should dramatically reduce the current uncertainties by one order of magnitude for the near-term experiments and two orders of magnitude for the CMB-S4 experiment. The constraints from CMB-S4 have the potential to rule out much of the parameter space for PMFs.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1524230
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 846, Issue 2; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 22 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (6)

Searching for primordial magnetic fields with CMB B -modes journal May 2018
Recent discoveries from the cosmic microwave background: a review of recent progress journal February 2018
Backreaction of electromagnetic fields and the Schwinger effect in pseudoscalar inflation magnetogenesis journal September 2019
Kinetic approach to the Schwinger effect during inflation journal December 2019
Backreaction of electromagnetic fields and the Schwinger effect in pseudoscalar inflation magnetogenesis text January 2019
Kinetic approach to the Schwinger effect during inflation text January 2019

Figures / Tables (9)