Searching for CPT Violation with Cosmic Microwave Background Data from WMAP and BOOMERANG

Bo Feng; Mingzhe Li; Jun-Qing Xia; Xuelei Chen; Xinmin Zhang

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.221302

paper

Searching for CPT Violation with Cosmic Microwave Background Data from WMAP and BOOMERANG

arXiv:astro-ph/0601095 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.221302

Abstract

We search for signatures of Lorentz and $C P T$ violations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies by using the WMAP and the 2003 flight of BOOMERANG (B03) data. We note that if the Lorentz and $C P T$ symmetries are broken by a Chern-Simons term in the effective lagrangian, which couples the dual electromagnetic field strength tensor to an external four-vector, the polarization vectors of propagating CMB photons will get rotated. Using the WMAP data alone, one could put an interesting constraint on the size of such a term. Combined with the B03 data, we found that a nonzero rotation angle of the photons is mildly favored: $Δ α = - 6. 0_{- 4.0}^{+ 4.0}$ $_{- 3.7}^{+ 3.9}$ deg (1, 2 $σ$ ).

Title slightly changed and references updated. Version pressed in PRL

Searching for CPT Violation with Cosmic Microwave Background Data from WMAP and BOOMERANG

Abstract

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