Constraints on CPT violation from WMAP three year polarization data: a wavelet analysis

Abstract

We perform a wavelet analysis of the temperature and polarization maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) delivered by the WMAP experiment in search for a parity violating signal. Such a signal could be seeded by new physics beyond the standard model, for which the Lorentz and CPT symmetries may not hold. Under these circumstances, the linear polarization direction of a CMB photon may get rotated during its cosmological journey, a phenomenon also called cosmological birefringence. Recently, Feng et al. have analyzed a subset the WMAP and BOOMERanG 2003 angular power spectra of the CMB, deriving a constraint that mildly favors a non zero rotation. By using wavelet transforms we set a tighter limit on the CMB photon rotation angle Δα= -2.5 \pm 3.0 (Δα= -2.5 \pm 6.0) at the one (two) σlevel, consistent with a null detection.

7 pages, 4 figures, some modifications to match accepted (PRD) version, results unchanged

References in corpus (5)

• Polarization Observations with the Cosmic Background Imager
• Lorentz-violating electrodynamics and the cosmic microwave background
• Probing polarization states of primordial gravitational waves with CMB anisotropies
• Spectral Dependence of CMB Polarization and Parity
• Neutrino number asymmetry and cosmological birefringence

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Electrodynamics with Lorentz-violating operators of arbitrary dimension
• Rotation of Linear Polarization Plane and Circular Polarization from Cosmological Pseudoscalar Fields
• Probing polarization states of primordial gravitational waves with CMB anisotropies
• Perturbative Lorentz and CPT violation for neutrino and antineutrino oscillations
• CMB Polarization Systematics, Cosmological Birefringence and the Gravitational Waves Background
• Constraining a spatially dependent rotation of the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization
• Needlet Detection of Features in WMAP CMB Sky and the Impact on Anisotropies and Hemispherical Asymmetries
• A Constraint on Planck-scale Modifications to Electrodynamics with CMB polarization data
• Testing CPT Symmetry with CMB Measurements
• From Equivalence Principles to Cosmology: Cosmic Polarization Rotation, CMB Observation, Neutrino Number Asymmetry, Lorentz Invariance and CPT
• CMB Polarization Systematics Due to Beam Asymmetry: Impact on Cosmological Birefringence
• $CPT$ Violating Electrodynamics and Chern-Simons Modified Gravity
• Cosmic Polarization Rotation, Cosmological Models, and the Detectability of Primordial Gravitational Waves
• Spin Needlets for Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Data Analysis