Parity Violation Constraints Using Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Spectra from 2006 and 2007 Observations by the QUaD Polarimeter

April 2009 • 2009PhRvL.102p1302W

Authors • Wu, E. Y. S. • Ade, P. • Bock, J. • Bowden, M. • Brown, M. L. • Cahill, G. • Castro, P. G. • Church, S. • Culverhouse, T. • Friedman, R. B. • Ganga, K. • Gear, W. K. • Gupta, S. • Hinderks, J. • Kovac, J. • Lange, A. E. • Leitch, E. • Melhuish, S. J. • Memari, Y. • Murphy, J. A. • Orlando, A. • Piccirillo, L. • Pryke, C. • Rajguru, N. • Rusholme, B. • Schwarz, R. • O'Sullivan, C. • Taylor, A. N. • Thompson, K. L. • Turner, A. H. • Zemcov, M.

Abstract • We constrain parity-violating interactions to the surface of last scattering using spectra from the QUaD experiment’s second and third seasons of observations by searching for a possible systematic rotation of the polarization directions of cosmic microwave background photons. We measure the rotation angle due to such a possible “cosmological birefringence” to be 0.55°±0.82° (random) ±0.5° (systematic) using QUaD’s 100 and 150 GHz temperature-curl and gradient-curl spectra over the spectra over the multipole range 200<ℓ<2000, consistent with null, and constrain Lorentz-violating interactions to <2×10^-43GeV (68% confidence limit). This is the best constraint to date on electrodynamic parity violation on cosmological scales.

Links

• PREPRINT http://arxiv.org/abs/0811.0618
• ELECTR http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.161302
• SPIRES http://inspirehep.net/search?p=find+eprint+arXiv:0811.0618