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New Extraction of the Cosmic Birefringence from the Planck 2018 Polarization Data

Yuto Minami*

Eiichiro Komatsu†

  • High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, 1-1 Oho, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0801, Japan

  • Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 1, D-85748 Garching, Germany and Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI), Todai Institutes for Advanced Study, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-8583, Japan

  • *yminami@post.kek.jp
  • †komatsu@mpa-garching.mpg.de

Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 221301 – Published 23 November, 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.221301

Abstract

We search for evidence of parity-violating physics in the Planck 2018 polarization data and report on a new measurement of the cosmic birefringence angle β. The previous measurements are limited by the systematic uncertainty in the absolute polarization angles of the Planck detectors. We mitigate this systematic uncertainty completely by simultaneously determining β and the angle miscalibration using the observed cross-correlation of the E- and B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background and the Galactic foreground emission. We show that the systematic errors are effectively mitigated and achieve a factor-of-2 smaller uncertainty than the previous measurement, finding β=0.35±0.14  deg (68% C.L.), which excludes β=0 at 99.2% C.L. This corresponds to the statistical significance of 2.4σ.

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synopsis

Hints of Cosmic Birefringence?

Published 23 November, 2020

A new analysis of the cosmic microwave background shows that its polarization may be rotated by exotic effects indicating beyond-standard-model physics.

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