Improved constraints on cosmic birefringence from the WMAP and Planck cosmic microwave background polarization data

Abstract

The observed pattern of linear polarization of the cosmic microwave background 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 cosmic microwave background 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 ¼ 0.342°þ 0.094°− 0.091°[ 68% confidence level (CL)] for nearly full-sky data, which excludes β ¼ 0 at 99.987% CL. 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.

Redshift dependent cosmic birefringence from axion-like dark matter

“…2 for 𝐶 𝐵𝐵 ℓ . Recent analyses of Planck data combined with WMAP 9-year data provide hints of isotropic cosmic birefringence with ᾱ = 0.342 +0.094 −0.091 deg [17]. If we want obtain a rotation of this order of magnitude with our modified version of CAMB we have to consider a coupling constant:…”

“…We provided here a qualitative description of the importance of taking into account time/redshift evolution of the birefringence angle and we refer to [18] for a more detailed discussion. Dark blue region corresponds to CMB birefringence limits presented in [6], blue dashed line corresponds to CMB birefringence limits discussed in [16], light blue dotted line corresponds to CMB birefringence of the order of 0.34 deg [17] taking into account the redshift dependency of the birefringence angle, as discussed here in Section 2. Plot created with the AxionLimits code [19], we refer to online documentation for references on the other constraints.…”

Redshift evolution of cosmic birefringence in CMB anisotropies

“…We showed how time evolution of the background pseudoscalar field imprints in general a non-trivial multipole dependence in the observed CMB angular power spectra which is not captured by the widely adopted approximation in which the redshift dependence of the rotation angle is neglected. This effect could be important in interpreting reported hints of birefringence in the Planck CMB spectra [46][47][48][49]. Beyond considering phenomenological redshift evolution for the rotation angle induced by a pseudo-scalar field, we also considered the theoretical prediction for Early Dark Energy, Quintessence and axion-like matter.…”

“…As a second point, we stress that the advance in data analysis and in the increasingly precision of CMB polarization data shrinked error bars approximately by a factor 3 from the Planck analysis on data release 2 [34]: hints of isotropic cosmic birefringence within the constant angle approximation were claimed with Planck data release 3 (DR3) [46], Planck data release 4 (DR4) [47], and more recently with WMAP 9-year and Planck NPIPE (α = 0.342 +0.094 −0.091 deg [48]). For a recent review see [49].…”

Parity-violation in bouncing cosmology

“…Hence, it is natural to introduce some actions effective only at a high energy scale to eliminate the instability problem. In the context of effective field theory (EFT) of non-singular cosmology [78,79], certain EFT operators such as R (3) δg 00 can help to evade the instabilities without altering the background dynamics.…”