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Cross-Correlation Of Cosmological Birefringence With Cmb Temperature, Robert R. Caldwell, Vera Gluscevic, Marc Kamionkowski
Cross-Correlation Of Cosmological Birefringence With Cmb Temperature, Robert R. Caldwell, Vera Gluscevic, Marc Kamionkowski
Dartmouth Scholarship
Theories for new particle and early-Universe physics abound with pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone fields that arise when global symmetries are spontaneously broken. The coupling of these fields to the Chern-Simons term of electromagnetism may give rise to cosmological birefringence (CB), a frequency-independent rotation of the linear polarization of photons as they propagate over cosmological distances. Inhomogeneities in the CB-inducing field may yield a rotation angle that varies across the sky. Here we note that such a spatially-varying birefringence may be correlated with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature. We describe quintessence scenarios where this cross-correlation exists and other scenarios where the scalar field …