Constraints on cosmological birefringence from PLANCK and Bicep2/Keck data

Journal Article · Wed Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2016/06/001· OSTI ID:22679691

Gruppuso, A. ^[1]; Gerbino, M.; Pagano, L.; Melchiorri, A. ^[2]; Natoli, P.; Mandolesi, N.

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1. INAF-IASF Bologna, Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica Cosmica di Bologna, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, via Gobetti 101, I-40129 Bologna (Italy)
2. Dipartimento di Fisica and INFN, Università di Roma ''La Sapienza'', P.le Aldo Moro 2, 00185, Rome (Italy)

The polarization of cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be used to constrain cosmological birefringence, the rotation of the linear polarization of CMB photons potentially induced by parity violating physics beyond the standard model. This effect produces non-null CMB cross correlations between temperature and B mode-polarization, and between E- and B-mode polarization. Both cross-correlations are otherwise null in the standard cosmological model. We use the recently released 2015 PLANCK likelihood in combination with the Bicep2/Keck/Planck (BKP) likelihood to constrain the birefringence angle α. Our findings, that are compatible with no detection, read α = 0.0° ± 1.3° (stat) ± 1° (sys) for PLANCK data and α = 0.30° ± 0.27° (stat) ± 1° (sys) for BKP data. We finally forecast the expected improvements over present constraints when the PLANCK BB, TB and EB spectra at high ℓ will be included in the analysis.

• OSTI ID: 22679691
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 06 Vol. 2016; ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
BIREFRINGENCE
CORRELATIONS
COSMOLOGICAL MODELS
DETECTION
PHOTONS
POLARIZATION
RELICT RADIATION
ROTATION
SPECTRA
STANDARD MODEL