English
Related papers

Related papers: Non-Uniform Cosmological Birefringence and Active …

200 papers

We point out that the rotation angle $\beta$ of cosmic birefringence, which is a recently reported parity-violating signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), has a phase ambiguity of $n\pi \,(n\in\mathbb{Z})$. This ambiguity has a…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-06-25 Fumihiro Naokawa , Toshiya Namikawa , Kai Murai , Ippei Obata , Kohei Kamada

Axion-like particles are dark matter candidates motivated by the Peccei-Quinn mechanism and also occur in effective field theories where their masses and photon couplings are independent. We estimate the dispersion of circularly polarized…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2019-08-13 Günter Sigl , Pranjal Trivedi

Hints of cosmic microwave background polarization rotation ($\Delta\vartheta \sim 10^{-3}$ rad) are commonly attributed to late-time dynamics of ultralight axions. We show that such ultralight degrees of freedom are not required.…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2026-05-14 Nemanja Kaloper

The cosmic birefringence (CB) angle refers to the rotation of the linear polarization plane of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiations when parity-violating theories are considered. We analyzed the Quantum Boltzmann equation for an…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2024-09-30 Somayyeh Mahmoudi , Mahdi Sadegh , Jafar Khodagholizadeh , Iman Motie , She-Sheng Xue , Alain Blanchard

Recently WMAP and BOOMERanG experiments have set stringent constraints on the polarization angle of photons propagating in an expanding universe: $\Delta \alpha = (-2.4 \pm 1.9)^\circ$. The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2011-03-28 H. J. Mosquera Cuesta , G. Lambiase

Cosmic birefringence is the in-vacuo, frequency independent rotation of the polarization plane of linearly polarized radiation, induced by a parity-violating term in the electromagnetic Lagrangian. We implement an harmonic estimator for the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-01-23 G. Zagatti , M. Bortolami , A. Gruppuso , P. Natoli , L. Pagano , G. Fabbian

The rotation of the linear polarisation plane of photons during propagation, also known as cosmic birefringence, is a powerful probe of parity-violating extensions of standard electromagnetism. Using Planck legacy data, we confirm previous…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-07-23 M. Ballardini , A. Gruppuso , S. Paradiso , S. S. Sirletti , P. Natoli

The search for cosmic polarization rotation or birefringence in the CMB is well-motivated because it can provide powerful constraints on parity-violating new physics, such as axion-like particles. In this paper we point out that since the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2023-06-07 Blake D. Sherwin , Toshiya Namikawa

Parity-violating extensions of standard electromagnetism produce cosmic birefringence, the in vacuo rotation of the linear polarisation direction of a photon during propagation. We employ {\it Planck} 2018 CMB polarised data to constrain…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2020-12-09 Alessandro Gruppuso , Diego Molinari , Paolo Natoli , Luca Pagano

We propose a novel statistical method to measure cosmic birefringence and demonstrate its power in probing parity violation due to axions. Exploiting an empirical correlation between the integrated radio polarization direction of a spiral…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-04-09 Weichen Winston Yin , Liang Dai , Junwu Huang , Lingyuan Ji , Simone Ferraro

The circular polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is usually taken to be zero since it is not generated by Thomson scattering. Here we explore the actual level of circular polarization in the CMB generated by conventional…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2018-08-30 Paulo Montero-Camacho , Christopher M. Hirata

Cosmic birefringence is a hypothesized parity violation in electromagnetism that predicts a frequency-independent polarization rotation as light propagates. This would rotate the light from the Cosmic Microwave Background, producing an…

A birefringent universe could show itself through a rotation of the plane of polarisation of the cosmic microwave background photons. This is usually investigated using polarisation $B$ modes, which is degenerate with miscalibration of the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2022-08-31 Arefe Abghari , Raelyn M. Sullivan , Lukas T. Hergt , Douglas Scott

Cosmic birefringence (CB) is a promising probe of parity-violating physics beyond the Standard Model, characterized by the rotation of the linear polarization plane of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons. This effect, quantified by…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2026-03-03 Jiazheng Dou , Wen Zhao

We review the methods used to test for the existence of cosmological birefringence, i.e. a rotation of the plane of linear polarization for electromagnetic radiation traveling over cosmological distances, which might arise in a number of…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2016-02-03 Sperello di Serego Alighieri

Cosmological Birefringence (CB) is a phenomenon, caused by parity violating modifications to electrodynamics, whereby the linear polarisation angle of light changes as photons traverse a vacuum. It is possible to use a number of different…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2020-09-04 Joel Williams , Aditya Rotti , Richard Battye

Cosmic birefringence is a parity-violating effect that might have rotated the plane of linearly polarized light of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) by an angle $\beta$ since its emission. This has recently been measured to be non-zero…

We explore the cosmic birefringence signal produced by an ultralight axion field with a small CP-violating coupling to bulk SM matter in addition to the usual CP-preserving photon coupling. The change in the vacuum expectation value of the…

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology · Physics 2024-08-14 Xuheng Luo , Anubhav Mathur

The cosmological birefringence caused by the coupling between the cosmic scalar field and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons through the Chern-Simons term can rotate the polarization planes of the photons, and mix the CMB E-mode…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-19 Wen Zhao , Mingzhe Li