Photon-photon interactions can be a source of CMB circular polarization

Abstract

Photon-photon interactions, as described by the standard Heisenberg-Euler interaction, can transform plane polarization of the CMB into circular polarization, in the period right after last scattering. We estimate the standard deviation of the resulting circular polarization parameter, as constrained by confining observations to angular regions of large plane polarization, and find results of the order of $10^{-9}$ for the Stokes parameter $V$.

arXiv commentReplaces 1205.4969, which was flawed beyond repair. 5 pages

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Circular polarization of the cosmic microwave background from vector and tensor perturbations
• Chiral photons from chiral gravitational waves
• Physics Beyond The Standard Model with Circular Polarization in the CMB and CMB-21cm Cross-Correlation
• Generation of Circular Polarization of CMB via Polarized Compton Scattering
• Milli-charged fermion vacuum polarization in cosmic magnetic fields and generation of CMB elliptic polarization
• Primordial Circular Polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Cosmic microwave background polarization in Noncommutative space-time
• Generation of CMB B-mode Polarization from Circular Polarization