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arXiv · 0812.2804

Birefringence, CMB polarization and magnetized B-mode

Massimo Giovannini·Kerstin E. Kunze
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Abstract

Even in the absence of a sizable tensor contribution, a B-mode polarization can be generated because of the competition between a pseudo-scalar background and pre-decoupling magnetic fields. By investigating the dispersion relations of a magnetoactive plasma supplemented by a pseudo-scalar interaction, the total B-mode polarization is shown to depend not only upon the plasma and Larmor frequencies but also on the pseudo-scalar rotation rate. If the (angular) frequency channels of a given experiment are larger than the pseudo-scalar rotation rate, the only possible source of (frequency dependent) B-mode autocorrelations must be attributed to Faraday rotation. In the opposite case the pseudo-scalar contribution dominates and the total rate becomes, in practice, frequency-independent. The B-mode cross-correlations can be used, under certain conditions, to break the degeneracy by disentangling the two birefringent contributions.

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Massimo Giovannini, Kerstin E. Kunze. 2008-12-15. Birefringence, CMB polarization and magnetized B-mode. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.79.087301

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