English

Statistics of CMB polarization angles

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2020-02-12 v1

Abstract

We study the distribution functions of the CMB polarization angle ψ\psi, focusing on the Planck 2018 CMB maps. We extend the model of Preece & Battye (2014) of Gaussian correlated QQ and UU Stokes parameters to allow nonzero means. When the variances of QQ and UU 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 2ψ2\psi and 4ψ4\psi phases. These modulations are visible in the Planck 2018 CMB maps. Furthermore, the mean value of UU 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

R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:04:19.902Z