A Constraint on Planck-scale Modifications to Electrodynamics with CMB polarization data

Abstract

We show that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization data gathered by the BOOMERanG 2003 flight and WMAP provide an opportunity to investigate {\it in-vacuo} birefringence, of a type expected in some quantum pictures of space-time, with a sensitivity that extends even beyond the desired Planck-scale energy. In order to render this constraint more transparent we rely on a well studied phenomenological model of quantum-gravity-induced birefringence, in which one easily establishes that effects introduced at the Planck scale would amount to values of a dimensionless parameter, denoted by $\xi$, with respect to the Planck energy which are roughly of order 1. By combining BOOMERanG and WMAP data we estimate $\xi \simeq -0.110\pm 0.076$ at the 68% c.l. Moreover, we forecast on the sensitivity to $\xi$ achievable by future CMB polarization experiments (PLANCK, Spider, EPIC), which, in the absence of systematics, will be at the 1-$\sigma$ confidence of $8.5\times 10^{-4}$ (PLANCK), $6.1\times 10^{-3}$ (Spider), and $1.0\times 10^{-5}$ (EPIC) respectively. The cosmic variance-limited sensitivity from CMB is $6.1\times 10^{-6}$.

16 pages

References in corpus (10)

• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• Five-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Likelihoods and Parameters from the WMAP data
• Lorentz-violating electrodynamics and the cosmic microwave background
• Rotation of Linear Polarization Plane and Circular Polarization from Cosmological Pseudoscalar Fields
• Constraints on CPT violation from WMAP three year polarization data: a wavelet analysis
• Testing CPT Symmetry with CMB Measurements
• Testing Lorentz Invariance Violation with WMAP Five Year Data
• Quantum Gravity Phenomenology
• The Experimental Probe of Inflationary Cosmology (EPIC): A Mission Concept Study for NASA's Einstein Inflation Probe
• Theory of Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Prospects for constraining quantum gravity dispersion with near term observations