Atacama cosmology telescope: constraints on cosmic birefringence

Namikawa, Toshiya, Guan, Yilun, Darwish, Omar, Sherwin, Blake D., Aiola, Simone, Battaglia, Nicholas, Beall, James A., Becker, Daniel T., Bond, J. Richard, Calabrese, Erminia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0837-0068, Chesmore, Grace E., Choi, Steve K., Devlin, Mark J., Dunkley, Joanna, Dünner, Rolando, Fox, Anna E., Gallardo, Patricio A., Gluscevic, Vera, Han, Dongwon, Hasselfield, Matthew, Hilton, Gene C., Hincks, Adam D., Hlo?ek, Renée, Hubmayr, Johannes, Huffenberger, Kevin, Hughes, John P., Koopman, Brian J., Kosowsky, Arthur, Louis, Thibaut, Lungu, Marius, MacInnis, Amanda, Madhavacheril, Mathew S., Mallaby-Kay, Maya, Maurin, Loïc, McMahon, Jeffrey, Moodley, Kavilan, Naess, Sigurd, Nati, Federico, Newburgh, Laura B., Nibarger, John P., Niemack, Michael D., Page, Lyman A., Qu, Frank J., Robertson, Naomi, Schillaci, Alessandro, Sehgal, Neelima, Sifón, Cristóbal, Simon, Sara M., Spergel, David N., Staggs, Suzanne T., Storer, Emilie R., van Engelen, Alexander, van Lanen, Jeff and Wollack, Edward J. 2020. Atacama cosmology telescope: constraints on cosmic birefringence. Physical Review D 101 (8) , 083527. 10.1103/PhysRevD.101.083527

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Abstract

We present new constraints on anisotropic birefringence of the cosmic microwave background polarization using two seasons of data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope covering 456 square degrees of sky. The birefringence power spectrum, measured using a curved-sky quadratic estimator, is consistent with zero. Our results provide the tightest current constraint on birefringence over a range of angular scales between 5 arc minutes and 9°. We improve previous upper limits on the amplitude of a scale-invariant birefringence power spectrum by a factor of between 2 and 3. Assuming a nearly massless axion field during inflation, our result is equivalent to a 2σ upper limit on the Chern-Simons coupling constant between axions and photons of gαγ<4.0×10−2/HI, where HI is the inflationary Hubble scale.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	American Physical Society
ISSN:	2470-0010
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	22 April 2020
Date of Acceptance:	2 April 2020
Last Modified:	04 May 2023 21:14
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/131167

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