학술논문
Searching for Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence with Polarization Data from SPTpol
Document Type
Working Paper
Author
Bianchini, F.; Wu, W. L. K.; Ade, P. A. R.; Anderson, A. J.; Austermann, J. E.; Avva, J. S.; Balkenhol, L.; Baxter, E.; Beall, J. A.; Bender, A. N.; Benson, B. A.; Bleem, L. E.; Carlstrom, J. E.; Chang, C. L.; Chaubal, P.; Chiang, H. C.; Chou, T. L.; Citron, R.; Moran, C. Corbett; Crawford, T. M.; Crites, A. T.; de Haan, T.; Dobbs, M. A.; Everett, W.; Gallicchio, J.; George, E. M.; Gilbert, A.; Gupta, N.; Halverson, N. W.; Henning, J. W.; Hilton, G. C.; Holder, G. P.; Holzapfel, W. L.; Hrubes, J. D.; Huang, N.; Hubmayr, J.; Irwin, K. D.; Knox, L.; Lee, A. T.; Li, D.; Lowitz, A.; Manzotti, A.; McMahon, J. J.; Meyer, S. S.; Millea, M.; Mocanu, L. M.; Montgomery, J.; Nadolski, A.; Natoli, T.; Nibarger, J. P.; Noble, G.; Novosad, V.; Omori, Y.; Padin, S.; Patil, S.; Pryke, C.; Reichardt, C. L.; Ruhl, J. E.; Saliwanchik, B. R.; Schaffer, K. K.; Sievers, C.; Simard, G.; Smecher, G.; Stark, A. A.; Story, K. T.; Tucker, C.; Vanderlinde, K.; Veach, T.; Vieira, J. D.; Wang, G.; Whitehorn, N.; Yefremenko, V.
Source
Phys. Rev. D 102, 083504 (2020)
Subject
Language
Abstract
We present a search for anisotropic cosmic birefringence in 500 deg$^2$ of southern sky observed at 150 GHz with the SPTpol camera on the South Pole Telescope. We reconstruct a map of cosmic polarization rotation anisotropies using higher-order correlations between the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) $E$ and $B$ fields. We then measure the angular power spectrum of this map, which is found to be consistent with zero. The non-detection is translated into an upper limit on the amplitude of the scale-invariant cosmic rotation power spectrum, $L(L+1)C_L^{\alpha\alpha}/2\pi < 0.10 \times 10^{-4}$ rad$^2$ (0.033 deg$^2$, 95% C.L.). This upper limit can be used to place constraints on the strength of primordial magnetic fields, $B_{1 \rm Mpc} < 17 {\rm nG} $ (95% C.L.), and on the coupling constant of the Chern-Simons electromagnetic term $g_{a\gamma} < 4.0 \times 10^{-2}/H_I $ (95% C.L.), where $H_I$ is the inflationary Hubble scale. For the first time, we also cross-correlate the CMB temperature fluctuations with the reconstructed rotation angle map, a signal expected to be non-vanishing in certain theoretical scenarios, and find no detectable signal. We perform a suite of systematics and consistency checks and find no evidence for contamination.
Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures - new subsection on non-Gaussian foregrounds, conclusions unchanged - updated to match published version on PRD
Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures - new subsection on non-Gaussian foregrounds, conclusions unchanged - updated to match published version on PRD