English

Computing Microwave Background Polarization Power Spectra from Cosmic Birefringence

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2022-03-30 v1

Abstract

We present a new publicly available code, \texttt{class_rot}, which modifies class\texttt{class} to enable fast non-perturbative calculation of cosmic microwave background polarization power spectra due to both isotropic and anisotropic polarization rotation from cosmic birefringence. Cosmic birefringence can arise from new parity-violating physics such as axion dark matter with a Chern-Simons coupling to photons or Faraday rotation due to a primordial magnetic field. Constraints on these effects can be obtained by comparing measurements to precise numerical calculations of the polarization power spectra. We describe the implementation of \texttt{class_rot} in terms of both mathematical formalism and coding architecture. We also provide usage examples and demonstrate the accuracy of the code by comparing with simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2111.14199,
  title  = {Computing Microwave Background Polarization Power Spectra from Cosmic Birefringence},
  author = {Hongbo Cai and Yilun Guan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.14199},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PRD

R2 v1 2026-06-24T07:54:49.968Z