Kavli Affiliate: Eiichiro Komatsu
| First 5 Authors: Johannes R. Eskilt, Eiichiro Komatsu, , ,
| Summary:
The observed pattern of linear polarization of the cosmic microwave
background (CMB) photons is a sensitive probe of physics violating parity
symmetry under inversion of spatial coordinates. A new parity-violating
interaction might have rotated the plane of linear polarization by an angle
$beta$ as the CMB photons have been traveling for more than 13 billion years.
This effect is known as "cosmic birefringence." In this paper, we present new
measurements of cosmic birefringence from a joint analysis of polarization data
from two space missions, Planck and WMAP. This dataset covers a wide range of
frequencies from 23 to 353 GHz. We measure $beta =
0.342^{circ,+0.094^circ}_{phantom{circ,}-0.091^circ}$ (68% C.L.) for
nearly full-sky data, which excludes $beta=0$ at 99.987% C.L. This corresponds
to the statistical significance of $3.6sigma$. There is no evidence for
frequency dependence of $beta$. We find a similar result, albeit with a larger
uncertainty, when removing the Galactic plane from the analysis.
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