No Arabic abstract
We explore the hemispherical asymmetry predicted in cosmic microwave background polarization when there is an asymmetry in temperature anisotropies due to primordial perturbations. We consider the cases of asymmetries due to adiabatic and isocurvature modes, and tensor perturbations. We show that the asymmetry in the TE, EE and/or BB correlations can be substantially larger than those in the TT power spectrum in certain cases. The relative asymmetry in the different cross-correlations, as well as the angular scale dependence, can in principle distinguish between different origins for the asymmetry.
The angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy observed by WMAP has an anomalous dip at l~20 and bump at l~40. One explanation for this structure is the presence of features in the primordial curvature power spectrum, possibly caused by a step in the inflationary potential. The detection of these features is only marginally significant from temperature data alone. However, the inflationary feature hypothesis predicts a specific shape for the E-mode polarization power spectrum with a structure similar to that observed in temperature at l~20-40. Measurement of the CMB polarization on few-degree scales can therefore be used as a consistency check of the hypothesis. The Planck satellite has the statistical sensitivity to confirm or rule out the model that best fits the temperature features with 3 sigma significance, assuming all other parameters are known. With a cosmic variance limited experiment, this significance improves to 8 sigma. For tests of inflationary models that can explain both the dip and bump in temperature, the primary source of uncertainty is confusion with polarization features created by a complex reionization history, which at most reduces the significance to 2.5 sigma for Planck and 5-6 sigma for an ideal experiment. Smoothing of the polarization spectrum by a large tensor component only slightly reduces the ability of polarization to test for inflationary features, as does requiring that polarization is consistent with the observed temperature spectrum given the expected low level of TE correlation on few-degree scales. A future polarization satellite would enable a decisive test of the feature hypothesis and provide complementary information about the shape of a possible step in the inflationary potential. (Abridged.)
Cosmological CPT violation will rotate the polarized direction of CMB photons, convert partial CMB E mode into B mode and vice versa. It will generate non-zero EB, TB spectra and change the EE, BB, TE spectra. This phenomenon gives us a way to detect the CPT-violation signature from CMB observations, and also provides a new mechanism to produce B mode polarization. In this paper, we perform a global analysis on tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ and polarization rotation angles based on current CMB datasets with both low $ell$ (Planck, BICEP2/Keck Array) and high $ell$ (POLARBEAR, SPTpol, ACTPol). Benefited from the high precision of CMB data, we obtain the isotropic rotation angle $bar{alpha} = -0.01^circ pm 0.37^circ $ at 68% C.L., the variance of the anisotropic rotation angles $C^{alpha}(0)<0.0032,mathrm{rad}^2$, the scale invariant power spectrum $D^{alphaalpha}_{ell in [2, 350]}<4.71times 10^{-5} ,mathrm{rad}^2$ and $r<0.057$ at 95% C.L.. Our result shows that with the polarization rotation effect, the 95% upper limit on $r$ gets tightened by 17%.
A persistent signal of power asymmetry on opposite hemispheres of CMB sky was seen in full-sky temperature measurements made so far. This asymmetry was seen in microwave sky from WMAP as well as PLANCK satellites, and calls for attention the larger question of emph{statistical isotropy}, one of the foundational principles of modern cosmology. In this work we present an analysis of polarized CMB maps from PLANCK 2015 full mission data. We apply the local variance estimator on low resolution $E-$mode maps from PLANCK 2015 polarization texttt{Commander} solution. We find a significant hemispherical power asymmetry in polarization data on large angular scales, at the level of $sim 2.6-3.9%$ depending on the galactic mask, and the circular disc radius used for computing local variance maps. However the direction is found to be pointing broadly towards CMB kinetic dipole direction. Precise measurements of CMB polarization in future will shed light on this apparent discrepancy in the anisotropy axis seen in temperature and polarized CMB sky, and likely influence of systematics on our findings.
We examine bounds on adiabatic and isocurvature density fluctuations from $mu$-type spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Studies of such distortion are complementary to CMB measurements of the spectral index and its running, and will help to constrain these parameters on significantly smaller scales. We show that a detection on the order of $mu sim 10^{-7}$ would strongly be at odds with the standard cosmological model of a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic perturbations. Further, we find that given the current CMB constraints on the isocurvature mode amplitude, a nearly scale-invariant isocurvature mode (common in many curvaton models) cannot produce significant $mu$-distortion. Finally, we show that future experiments will strongly constrain the amplitude of the isocurvature modes with a highly blue spectrum as predicted by certain axion models.
On the assumption that quasars (QSO) and gamma-ray bursts (GRB) represent standardisable candles, we provide evidence that the Hubble constant $H_0$ adopts larger values in hemispheres aligned with the CMB dipole direction. The observation is consistent with similar trends in strong lensing time delay, Type Ia supernovae (SN) and with well documented discrepancies in the cosmic dipole. Therefore, not only do strong lensing time delay, Type Ia SN, QSOs and GRBs seem to trace a consistent anisotropic Universe, but variations in $H_0$ across the sky suggest that Hubble tension is a symptom of a deeper cosmological malaise.