Related papers: CPT conserving cosmological birefringence
In this brief review we explicitly calculate the radiative corrections to the Chern-Simons-like term in the cases of zero and finite temperature, and in the gravity theory. Our results are obtained under the general guidance of dimensional…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) contains perturbations that are close to Gaussian and isotropic. This means that its information content, in the sense of the ability to constrain cosmological models, is closely related to the number…
We examine the polarization signal of the cosmic microwave background radiation associated with distant clusters. The polarization is induced by the Thomson scattering of microwave photons with ionized gas of clusters and contains…
We present a pedagogical and phenomenological introduction to the study of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization to build intuition about the prospects and challenges facing its detection. Thomson scattering of temperature…
Polarization of the cosmic microwave background, though not yet detected, provides a source of information about cosmological parameters complementary to temperature fluctuations. This paper provides a complete theoretical treatment of…
Birefringence phenomena stemming from vacuum polarization are revisited in the framework of coherent scattering. Based on photon-photon scattering, our analysis brings out the direct connection between this process and vacuum birefringence.…
We resume a long-standing, yet not forgotten, debate on whether a Chern-Simons birefringence can be generated by a local term $b_\mu\bar\psi\gamma^\mu \gamma_5\psi$ in the Lagrangian (where $b_\mu$ are constants). In the present paper we…
We propose a generalization of the Chern-Simon (CS) Lagrangian which is invariant under the SIM(2) transformations but not under the full Lorentz group. We study the effect of such a term on radiation propagating over cosmological…
We forecast the ability of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization datasets to constrain theories of eternal inflation using cosmic bubble collisions. Using the Fisher matrix formalism, we determine both the overall…
We revisit the classification of polarization observables of the cosmic microwave background. There exists a unified approach to the $3 \times 3$ density matrix by which intensity, linear and circular polarization are treated on an equal…
With polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) now detected, and confirmed by several independent experiments, the next goal is to characterise accurately its statistical properties. In these lecture notes we review the physical…
We consider a universe with a non-classical stringy topology that has fixed points. We concentrate on the simplest example, an orbifold point, and study its observable imprints on the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We show that an…
We study CPT and Lorentz violation in the electroweak gauge sector of the Standard Model in the context of the Standard-Model Extension. In particular, we consider the Lorentz-violating and CPT-odd Chern-Simons like parameter for the W…
In this work we study how CPT-odd Maxwell-Carroll-Field-Jackiw (MCFJ) electrodynamics as well as a dimension-5 extension of it affect the optical activity of continuous media. The starting point is dimension-3 MCFJ electrodynamics in matter…
The motion of the solar system barycenter with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) induces a very large apparent dipole component into the CMB brightness map at the 3 mK level. In this Letter we discuss another kinematic effect…
We study the imprints of a cosmological redshift-dependent pseudoscalar field $\phi$ on the rotation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) linear polarization generated by a coupling $ \phi F^{\mu\nu} \tilde F_{\mu \nu}$. We show how either…
Scattering of the temperature anisotropy quadrupole by free electrons in galaxy clusters leads to a secondary polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations. At low redshifts, the temperature quadrupole contains a…
Line-of-sight distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), including gravitational lensing, cosmic birefringence, and patchy screening, encode crucial cosmological information. While quadratic estimators (QE) have been excellent…
We examine the degree to which observations of large-scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization can shed light on the puzzling large-scale power modulation in maps of CMB anisotropy. We consider a phenomenological model in which…
The potential role of cosmic topological defects has raised interest in the astrophysical community for many years now. In this set of notes, we give an introduction to the subject of cosmic topological defects and some of their possible…