Related papers: CMB Birefringence from Vacuum Interfaces
Measurements of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies constrain isocurvature fluctuations between photons and non-relativistic particles to be sub-dominant to adiabatic fluctuations. Perturbations in the relative number densities…
We calculate the vacuum polarization-induced ellipticity acquired by a linearly polarized laser beam of angular frequency $\bar \omega$ on traversing a region containing a transverse magnetic field rotating with a small angular velocity…
In the presence of strong magnetic fields, the vacuum becomes a birefringent medium. We show that this QED effect couples the direction of the polarization of photons leaving the NS surface, to the direction of the magnetic field along the…
Very light pseudoscalar fields, often referred to as axions, are compelling dark matter candidates and can potentially be detected through their coupling to the electromagnetic field. Recently a novel detection technique using the cosmic…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization, whose experimental detection must become the next natural step in the study of the CMB radiation, depends on the dynamics of hydrogen recombination in the Universe, on the relation between…
We consider birefringent (i.e., polarization changing) scattering of x-ray photons at the superposition of two optical laser beams of ultra-high intensity and study the resonant contributions of axions or axion-like particles, which could…
Axion-like particles (ALPs) rotate the linear polarization of photons through the ALP-photon coupling and convert the cosmic microwave background (CMB) $E$-mode to the $B$-mode. We derive the relation between the ALP dynamics and the…
We investigate the inherent influence of light polarization on the intensity distribution in anisotropic media undergoing a local inhomogeneous rotation of the principal axes. Whereas in general such configuration implies a complicated…
Recent progress in high sensitivity Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization experiments opens up a window on large scale structure (LSS), as CMB polarization fluctuations on small angular scales can arise from a combination of LSS…
We study asymptotic dynamics of photons propagating in the polarized vacuum of a locally de Sitter Universe. The origin of the vacuum polarization is fluctuations of a massless, minimally coupled, scalar, which we model by the one-loop…
We present the first constraints on multipole-dependent cosmic birefringence using CMB polarization data from the BK18 dataset, which combines observations from BICEP2, Keck Array, and BICEP3 at frequencies of 95, 150, and 220 GHz. Photon…
CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) polarization observations test many aspects of cosmological models. Effective pseudoscalar-photon interaction(s) would induce a rotation of linear polarization of electromagnetic wave propagating with…
We discuss the possible impact of astrophysical foregrounds on three recent exciting results of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments: the WMAP measurements of the temperature-polarization (TE) correlation power spectrum, the…
A number of physical processes show some form of bifurcation or periodic splintering of a single distribution into two new ones. Recently, it has been noted that cavity searches for interactions between photons and exotic fields may also…
The damping of primordial perturbations at small scales gives rise to distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Here, the dependence of the distortion on the different types of cosmological initial conditions is explored,…
Cosmic birefringence is an effect where the plane of polarisation of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is rotated by an angle $\beta$ through coupling to a hypothetical parity-violating field. We analyse the Planck Public Release 4 (PR4…
We quantify the level of polarization of the atmosphere due to Zeeman splitting of oxygen in the Earth's magnetic field and compare it to the level of polarization expected from the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation.…
Low energy string theory predicts the existence of an axion field which can lead to cosmic birefringence. We solve the electromagnetic wave equations in the presence of such an axion and a dilaton field in order to determine their effect on…
The bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) generated by a correlation between a time-dependent gravitational potential and the weak gravitational lensing effect provides a direct measurement of the influence of dark energy on…
The recently reported non-zero isotropic birefringence angle in Planck 2018 polarization data provides a tantalizing hint for new physics of axions. In this paper, we explain this by a string theory motivated axion with a monodromy…