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.

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

References in corpus (15)

• Why your model parameter confidences might be too optimistic -- unbiased estimation of the inverse covariance matrix
• The clustering of galaxies in the completed SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Anisotropic galaxy clustering in Fourier-space
• New Extraction of the Cosmic Birefringence from the Planck 2018 Polarization Data
• Cosmic Birefringence from Planck Data Release 4
• Adding helicity to inflationary magnetogenesis
• Parity breaking signatures from a Chern-Simons coupling during inflation: the case of non-Gaussian gravitational waves
• B-modes from Cosmic Strings
• Inflationary tensor fossils in large-scale structure
• Parity-violating and anisotropic correlations in pseudoscalar inflation
• The Odd-Parity CMB Bispectrum
• Parity violation in the CMB trispectrum from the scalar sector
• Estimating Covariance Matrices for Two- and Three-Point Correlation Function Moments in Arbitrary Survey Geometries
• 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
• The bispectrum of matter perturbations from cosmic strings

Cited by in corpus (57)

• 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?
• 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 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
• A New Solution for the Observed Isotropic Cosmic Birefringence Angle and its Implications for the Anisotropic Counterpart through a Boltzmann Approach
• 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
• On the galaxy 3-point correlation function in Modified Gravity
• Apparent parity violation in the observed galaxy trispectrum
• Hitting the mark: Optimising Marked Power Spectra for Cosmology
• Probing vector chirality in the early Universe
• Large-scale asymmetry in the distribution of galaxy spin directions -- analysis and reproduction
• Anatomy of Parity-violating Trispectra in Galaxy Surveys
• Extracting parity-violating gravitational waves from projected tidal force tensor in three dimensions
• Probing cosmology via the clustering of critical points
• Forecast Analysis of Astrophysical Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background beyond general relativity: A Case Study on Brans-Dicke Gravity
• An Analytically Tractable Marked Power Spectrum
• A Model for the Redshift-Space Galaxy 4-Point Correlation Function
• Angular correlations on causally-coherent inflationary horizons
• Breaking parity: the case of the trispectrum from chiral scalar-tensor theories of gravity
• Phenomenology of a vector-field-induced (and possibly parity breaking) compensated isocurvature perturbation
• Phenomenology of Holography via Quantum Coherence on Causal Horizons
• 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
• On the spatial distribution of the Large-Scale structure: An Unsupervised search for Parity Violation
• Inflation with the Chern-Simons term in the Palatini formulation
• Scalar parity-odd trispectrum from gravitational Chern-Simons interaction vertices
• A Match Made in Heaven: Linking Observables in Inflationary Cosmology
• Dipole-independent measurements of nearly-zero CMB correlation: a possible symmetry of primordial causal quantum coherence
• The Odd-Parity Part of the Observed Galaxy Trispectrum
• Parity violation in photon quasinormal modes of black holes
• 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
• Analytical Template for the 4-Point Correlation Function Covariance Beyond the Gaussian Random Field $\mathrm{I}$: 1-Loop Corrections involving Second-Order Densities
• 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