Related papers: Cosmic Background Radiation Polarization Experimen…
Polarization is a basic property of light and is fundamentally linked to the internal geometry of a source of radiation. Polarimetry complements photometric, spectroscopic, and imaging analyses of sources of radiation and has made possible…
Much recent work on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has focussed on the angular power spectrum of temperature anisotropies and particularly on the recovery of cosmological parameters from acoustic peaks in the power spectrum. However,…
The cosmic microwave background polarization is rich of cosmological information complementary to those from temperature anisotropies. Linear polarization can be decomposed uniquely in two components of opposite parities, called E and B.…
The cosmic infrared background records much of the radiant energy released by processes of structure formation that have occurred since the decoupling of matter and radiation following the Big Bang. In the past few years, data from the…
The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation carries essential information on early stages of the Universe such as the cosmic inflation, forming cosmological structures through gravitational lensing, and the epoch of…
Concerning new physics beyond the Standard Model we explore the discovery and analysis potentials of polarized (hadronic) experiments and we compare with the unpolarized case. For discovery, beam polarization is helpful in the case of…
In this paper we briefly review the current status of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations, summarising the latest results obtained from CMB experiments, both in intensity and polarization, and the constraints imposed on the…
Measurement of cosmic microwave background polarization is today a major goal of observational cosmology. The level of the signal to measure, however, makes it very sensitive to various systematic effects. In the case of Planck, which…
The properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation provide unique constraints on cosmological models, i.e. on the content, history, and evolution of the Universe. I discuss the latest measurements of the spectral and spatial…
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…
In addition to its spectrum and temperature anisotropy, the 2.7K Cosmic Microwave Background is also expected to exhibit a low level of polarization. The spatial power spectrum of the polarization can provide details about the formation of…
The possibility that there is some Cosmic Polarization Rotation (CPR), i.e. that the polarization angle rotates while a photon travels in vacuum over large distances, is important for at least two reasons: first, the polarization angle…
The study of cosmic reionization has acquired increasing significance over the last few years because of various reasons. On the observational front, we now have good quality data of different types at high redshifts (quasar absorption…
X-ray polarimetry is now providing a new way to look at the high energy sky. The addition of two observables, polarization fraction and angle, reveals crucial new information on the structure of accretion flows and magnetic fields in…
We briefly discuss the history of X-ray polarimetry for astronomical applications including a guide to the appropriate statistics. We also provide an introduction to some of the new techniques discussed in more detail elsewhere in these…
Measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) bispectrum, or three-point correlation function, has now become one of the principle efforts in early-Universe cosmology. Here we show that there is a odd-parity component of the CMB…
The cosmic infrared background (CIB) is slightly polarized. Polarization directions of individual galaxies could be aligned with tidal fields around galaxies, resulting in nonzero CIB polarization. We use a linear intrinsic alignment model…
The anisotropy and polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) induced by the scalar and tensor metric perturbations are computed in the long-wavelength limit. It is found that the large-scale polarization of CMBR…
The polarization of the CMBR represents a powerful test for modern cosmology. It allows to break the degeneracy of fundamental cosmological parameters, and also to observe the contribution of gravitational waves background to the CMBR…
We summarise the current status of cosmic microwave background spectrum and anisotropy measurements, and their theoretical interpretation. This is the update of the mini-review for the 1997 web-version of the Review of Particle Properties.