We search for the signature of parity-violating physics in the cosmic microwave background, called cosmic birefringence, using the Planck data release 4. We initially find a birefringence angle of β=0.30±0.11 (68% C.L.) for nearly full-sky data. The values of β decrease as we enlarge the Galactic mask, which can be interpreted as the effect of polarized foreground emission. Two independent ways to model this effect are used to mitigate the systematic impact on β for different sky fractions. We choose not to assign cosmological significance to the measured value of β until we improve our knowledge of the foreground polarization.
@article{arxiv.2201.07682,
title = {Cosmic Birefringence from Planck Data Release 4},
author = {P. Diego-Palazuelos and J. R. Eskilt and Y. Minami and M. Tristram and R. M. Sullivan and A. J. Banday and R. B. Barreiro and H. K. Eriksen and K. M. Górski and R. Keskitalo and E. Komatsu and E. Martínez-González and D. Scott and P. Vielva and I. K. Wehus},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.07682},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
7 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. (v2) References added. Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters