Limited Impact of CMB B-mode Polarization on Constraints on Cosmic Topology

Abstract

The global spatial structure of the universe is a fundamental question in cosmology. Although the standard model usually assumes a trivial topology, a multiply connected universe can break statistical isotropy and generate off-diagonal covariance between the spherical-harmonic coefficients of cosmic microwave background fluctuations. In this work, we investigate whether CMB B-mode polarization improves constraints on the cubic three-torus, or $E_1$ topology. We construct the full harmonic-space covariance matrices of the temperature, E-mode, and primordial B-mode anisotropies, including correlations between different $(\ell,m)$ modes, and evaluate Gaussian likelihoods using random realizations generated from a statistically isotropic $Λ$CDM model with trivial topology. To isolate the intrinsic topological information carried by each CMB observable, we consider the ideal cosmic-variance-limited case, neglecting instrumental noise and gravitational lensing. We find that adding primordial B-mode polarization yields only a marginal improvement in the ability to distinguish the $E_1$ topology from the trivial topology, even under these ideal conditions. The different constraining powers of the temperature, E-mode, and B-mode anisotropies can be understood through the combined effects of their transfer-function responses and the topology-induced off-diagonal correlations in harmonic space. }