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We present an improved search for axion-like polarization oscillations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with observations from the Keck Array. An all-sky, temporally sinusoidal rotation of CMB polarization, equivalent to a time-variable cosmic birefringence, is an observable manifestation of a local axion field and potentially allows a CMB polarimeter to detect axion-like dark matter directly. We describe improvements to the method presented in previous work, and we demonstrate the updated method with an expanded dataset consisting of the 2012-2015 observing seasons. We set limits on the axion-photon coupling constant for mass $m$ in the range $10^{-23}$-$10^{-18}~mathrm{eV}$, which corresponds to oscillation periods on the order of hours to years. Our results are consistent with the background model. For periods between $1$ and $30~mathrm{d}$ ($1.6 times 10^{-21} leq m leq 4.8 times 10^{-20}~mathrm{eV}$), the $95%$-confidence upper limits on rotation amplitude are approximately constant with a median of $0.27^circ$, which constrains the axion-photon coupling constant to $g_{phigamma} < (4.5 times 10^{-12}~mathrm{GeV}^{-1}) m/(10^{-21}~mathrm{eV}$), if axion-like particles constitute all of the dark matter. More than half of the collected BICEP dataset has yet to be analyzed, and several current and future CMB polarimetry experiments can apply the methods presented here to achieve comparable or superior constraints. In the coming years, oscillation measurements can achieve the sensitivity to rule out unexplored regions of the axion parameter space.
We present a search for axion-like polarization oscillations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with observations from the Keck Array. A local axion field induces an all-sky, temporally sinusoidal rotation of CMB polarization. A CMB polarimeter
STPpol, POLARBEAR and BICEP2 have recently measured the cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization in various sky regions of several tens of square degrees and obtained BB power spectra in the multipole range 20-3000, detecting the compone
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is affected by the total radiation density around the time of decoupling. At that epoch, neutrinos comprised a significant fraction of the radiative energy, but there could also be a contribution from primordial
We present the strongest constraints to date on anisotropies of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization rotation derived from 150 GHz data taken by the BICEP2/Keck Array CMB experiments up to and including the 2014 observing season (BK14). The
We forecast the ability of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization datasets to constrain theories of eternal inflation using cosmic bubble collisions. Using the Fisher matrix formalism, we determine both the overall detectabili