Statistics of CMB polarization angles
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
2020-02-12 v1
Abstract
We study the distribution functions of the CMB polarization angle , focusing on the Planck 2018 CMB maps. We extend the model of Preece & Battye (2014) of Gaussian correlated and Stokes parameters to allow nonzero means. When the variances of and are equal and their covariance and means are zero, the polarization angle is uniformly distributed. Otherwise the uniform distribution will be modulated by harmonics with and phases. These modulations are visible in the Planck 2018 CMB maps. Furthermore, the mean value of is peculiar compared to the power spectrum.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2001.01757,
title = {Statistics of CMB polarization angles},
author = {James Creswell and Nadia Dachlythra and Hao Liu and Pavel Naselsky and Per Rex Christensen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.01757},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
14 pages, 6 figures