Probing Parity-Violation with the Four-Point Correlation Function of BOSS Galaxies

Abstract

Parity-violating physics in the early Universe can leave detectable traces in late-time observables. Whilst vector- and tensor-type parity-violation can be observed in the $B$-modes of the cosmic microwave background, scalar-type signatures are visible only in the four-point correlation function (4PCF) and beyond. This work presents a blind test for parity-violation in the 4PCF of the BOSS CMASS sample, considering galaxy separations in the range $[20,160]h^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}$. The parity-odd 4PCF contains no contributions from standard $\Lambda$CDM physics and can be efficiently measured using recently developed estimators. Data are analyzed using both a non-parametric rank test (comparing the BOSS 4PCFs to those of realistic simulations) and a compressed ${\chi }^2$ analysis, with the former avoiding the assumption of a Gaussian likelihood. These find similar results, with the rank test giving a detection probability of $99.6\%$ ($2.9\sigma$). This provides significant evidence for parity-violation, either from cosmological sources or systematics. We perform a number of systematic tests: although these do not reveal any observational artefacts, we cannot exclude the possibility that our detection is caused by the simulations not faithfully representing the statistical properties of the BOSS data. Our measurements can be used to constrain physical models of parity-violation. As an example, we consider a coupling between the inflaton and a $U(1)$ gauge field and place bounds on the latter's energy density, which are several orders of magnitude stronger than those previously reported. Upcoming probes such as DESI and Euclid will reveal whether our detection of parity-violation is due to new physics, and strengthen the bounds on a variety of models.

arXiv comment30 pages, 11 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. D. Code available at https://github.com/oliverphilcox/Parity-Odd-4PCF

References in corpus (80)

• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: cosmological analysis of the DR12 galaxy sample
• Non-Gaussian features of primordial fluctuations in single field inflationary models
• The Eleventh and Twelfth Data Releases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Final Data from SDSS-III
• Planck 2018 results. X. Constraints on inflation
• SDSS-III: Massive Spectroscopic Surveys of the Distant Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems
• The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III
• Quintessence and the Rest of the World
• Magnetic Fields in the Early Universe
• Signature of Gravity Waves in Polarization of the Microwave Background
• Power Spectrum Analysis of Three-Dimensional Redshift Surveys
• Why your model parameter confidences might be too optimistic -- unbiased estimation of the inverse covariance matrix
• Chern-Simons Modified General Relativity
• Cosmological Signature of New Parity-Violating Interactions
• Single field consistency relation for the 3-point function
• Ghost Inflation
• What is the lowest possible reheating temperature?
• Cosmological Parameters from the BOSS Galaxy Power Spectrum
• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Anisotropic galaxy clustering in Fourier-space
• Imprints of a Primordial Preferred Direction on the Microwave Background
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: mock galaxy catalogues for the BOSS Final Data Release
• Leptogenesis from Gravity Waves in Models of Inflation
• Particle production during inflation and gravitational waves detectable by ground-based interferometers
• New Extraction of the Cosmic Birefringence from the Planck 2018 Polarization Data
• Parity violation in the Cosmic Microwave Background from a pseudoscalar inflaton
• Massive Lossless Data Compression and Multiple Parameter Estimation from Galaxy Spectra
• Solid Inflation
• Discriminating weak lensing from intrinsic spin correlations using the curl-gradient decomposition
• Gravitational Baryogenesis
• Parameter inference with estimated covariance matrices
• Non-linear perturbation theory extension of the Boltzmann code CLASS
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Modeling the clustering and halo occupation distribution of BOSS-CMASS galaxies in the Final Data Release
• Primordial non-Gaussianity and Bispectrum Measurements in the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large-Scale Structure
• Gauge-preheating and the end of axion inflation
• The Bispectrum: From Theory to Observations
• Cosmic Birefringence from Planck Data Release 4
• Adding helicity to inflationary magnetogenesis
• Testing Parity-Violating Mechanisms with Cosmic Microwave Background Experiments
• Detection of Baryon Acoustic Oscillation Features in the Large-Scale 3-Point Correlation Function of SDSS BOSS DR12 CMASS Galaxies
• Clustering Fossils from the Early Universe
• Imprint of inflation on galaxy shape correlations
• Signatures of anisotropic sources in the squeezed-limit bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background
• Galaxy Power Spectrum Multipoles Covariance in Perturbation Theory
• Parity breaking signatures from a Chern-Simons coupling during inflation: the case of non-Gaussian gravitational waves
• Computing the Three-Point Correlation Function of Galaxies in $\mathcal{O}(N^2)$ Time
• Axion Gauge Field Inflation and Gravitational Leptogenesis: A Lower Bound on B Modes from the Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry of the Universe
• Generalized massive optimal data compression
• Imprints of Massive Primordial Fields on Large-Scale Structure
• Probing P and CP Violations on the Cosmological Collider
• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: theoretical systematics and Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the galaxy correlation function
• Frequency-Dependent Constraints on Cosmic Birefringence from the LFI and HFI Planck Data Release 4
• B-modes from Cosmic Strings
• Inflationary tensor fossils in large-scale structure
• The Trispectrum in the Effective Field Theory of Large Scale Structure
• Parity violation of primordial magnetic fields in the CMB bispectrum
• Parity-violating CMB correlators with non-decaying statistical anisotropy
• The Origin of Parity Violation in Polarized Dust Emission and Implications for Cosmic Birefringence
• Fewer Mocks and Less Noise: Reducing the Dimensionality of Cosmological Observables with Subspace Projections
• Parity-violating and anisotropic correlations in pseudoscalar inflation
• The Odd-Parity CMB Bispectrum
• Parity violation in the CMB trispectrum from the scalar sector
• New Optimised Estimators for the Primordial Trispectrum
• ENCORE: An $\mathcal{O}(N_{\mathrm{g}}^2)$ Estimator for Galaxy $N$-Point Correlation Functions
• Graviton non-Gaussianities and Parity Violation in the EFT of Inflation
• Is Cosmic Parity Violation Responsible for the Anomalies in the WMAP Data?
• Signatures of anisotropic sources in the trispectrum of the cosmic microwave background
• Two- and Three-Dimensional Probes of Parity in Primordial Gravity Waves
• Likelihood Non-Gaussianity in Large-Scale Structure Analyses
• Estimating Covariance Matrices for Two- and Three-Point Correlation Function Moments in Arbitrary Survey Geometries
• Seeking Inflation Fossils in the Cosmic Microwave Background
• Detecting higher spin fields through statistical anisotropy in the CMB bispectrum
• Computing the Small-Scale Galaxy Power Spectrum and Bispectrum in Configuration-Space
• Graph Database Solution for Higher Order Spatial Statistics in the Era of Big Data
• Inflationary Birefringence and Baryogenesis
• The Odd-Parity Galaxy Bispectrum
• CMB anisotropies generated by cosmic string loops
• The probability distribution for non-Gaussianity estimators constructed from the CMB trispectrum
• Redshift-space distortions from vector perturbations
• On the Fast Random Sampling and Other Properties of the Three Point Correlation Function in Galaxy Surveys
• The bispectrum of matter perturbations from cosmic strings
• An Exact Integral-to-Sum Relation for Products of Bessel Functions

Cited by in corpus (58)

• Horizon-scale tests of gravity theories and fundamental physics from the Event Horizon Telescope image of Sagittarius A${}^{\ast }$
• Is the Observable Universe Consistent with the Cosmological Principle?
• Large Spin-2 Signals at the Cosmological Collider
• Colliding Ghosts: Constraining Inflation with the Parity-Odd Galaxy Four-Point Function
• Parity-Odd and Even Trispectrum from Axion Inflation
• Cosmological Correlators Through the Looking Glass: Reality, Parity, and Factorisation
• Consistency tests of field level inference with the EFT likelihood
• Local primordial non-Gaussianity from the large-scale clustering of photometric DESI luminous red galaxies
• Cosmological Information in Skew Spectra of Biased Tracers in Redshift Space
• Unveiling the nonlinear dynamics of a rolling axion during inflation
• There and Back Again: Mapping and Factorising Cosmological Observables
• No evidence for parity violation in BOSS
• Scalar-Induced Gravitational Waves from Ghost Inflation and Parity Violation
• Optimal Estimation of the Binned Mask-Free Power Spectrum, Bispectrum, and Trispectrum on the Full Sky: Scalar Edition
• Cosmological Probes of Structure Growth and Tests of Gravity
• A New Solution for the Observed Isotropic Cosmic Birefringence Angle and its Implications for the Anisotropic Counterpart through a Boltzmann Approach
• A roadmap to cosmological parameter analysis with third-order shear statistics III: Efficient estimation of third-order shear correlation functions and an application to the KiDS-1000 data
• Parity-violating scalar trispectrum from a rolling axion during inflation
• Scalar induced gravitational waves in metric teleparallel gravity with the Nieh-Yan term
• Probing parity-odd bispectra with anisotropies of GW $V$ modes
• Wide-angle effects in the galaxy bispectrum
• Scalar induced gravitational waves in symmetric teleparallel gravity with a parity-violating term
• Reanalysis of the spin direction distribution of Galaxy Zoo SDSS spiral galaxies
• Parity violation in primordial tensor non-Gaussianities from matter bounce cosmology
• Hitting the mark: Optimising Marked Power Spectra for Cosmology
• On the galaxy 3-point correlation function in Modified Gravity
• Apparent parity violation in the observed galaxy trispectrum
• Anatomy of Parity-violating Trispectra in Galaxy Surveys
• Extracting parity-violating gravitational waves from projected tidal force tensor in three dimensions
• Large-scale asymmetry in the distribution of galaxy spin directions -- analysis and reproduction
• Probing vector chirality in the early Universe
• Phenomenology of a vector-field-induced (and possibly parity breaking) compensated isocurvature perturbation
• Breaking parity: the case of the trispectrum from chiral scalar-tensor theories of gravity
• A Model for the Redshift-Space Galaxy 4-Point Correlation Function
• Angular correlations on causally-coherent inflationary horizons
• An Analytically Tractable Marked Power Spectrum
• Forecast Analysis of Astrophysical Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background beyond general relativity: A Case Study on Brans-Dicke Gravity
• Probing cosmology via the clustering of critical points
• Phenomenology of Holography via Quantum Coherence on Causal Horizons
• On the spatial distribution of the Large-Scale structure: An Unsupervised search for Parity Violation
• First astrometric constraints on parity-violation in the gravitational wave background
• Doppler bias: impact of peculiar velocities on color selection and the large scale structure of galaxy surveys
• Scalar parity-odd trispectrum from gravitational Chern-Simons interaction vertices
• Inflation with the Chern-Simons term in the Palatini formulation
• A Match Made in Heaven: Linking Observables in Inflationary Cosmology
• Parity violation in photon quasinormal modes of black holes
• The Odd-Parity Part of the Observed Galaxy Trispectrum
• Parity Violation in Galaxy Shapes: Primordial Non-Gaussianity
• The equation and solution of 4-point correlation function of galaxies in Gaussian approximation and its parity-odd part
• Dipole-independent measurements of nearly-zero CMB correlation: a possible symmetry of primordial causal quantum coherence
• Analytical Template for the 4-Point Correlation Function Covariance Beyond the Gaussian Random Field $\mathrm{II}$: 1-Loop Corrections with Third-Order Densities
• Quantifying Weighted Morphological Content of Large-Scale Structures via Simulation-Based Inference
• Skew-spectra: a generalization to spin-$s$
• Parity-odd Four-Point Correlation Function from DESI Data Release 1 Luminous Red Galaxy Sample
• Circularly polarized gravitational waves from parity-violating scalar-tensor theory
• An Optimal In-Situ Multipole Algorithm for the Isotropic Three-Point Correlation Functions
• Bridging inflation and reheating: chiral gravitational waves from aHz to GHz
• Analytical Template for the 4-Point Correlation Function Covariance Beyond the Gaussian Random Field $\mathrm{I}$: 1-Loop Corrections involving Second-Order Densities