CMB Polarization Systematics, Cosmological Birefringence and the Gravitational Waves Background

TL;DR

Accurate calibration of CMB polarization is crucial to avoid biases in detecting gravitational waves or cosmological birefringence, with implications for current and future experiments.

Contribution

We develop a formalism to incorporate calibration uncertainties into CMB polarization analysis and demonstrate its impact on BOOMERanG data and future experiment constraints.

Findings

Calibration uncertainties can mimic signals of gravitational waves or birefringence.

BOOMERanG data shows a potential rotation angle of -4.3°±4.1° when accounting for calibration.

Future experiments require calibration accuracy better than 1° for Planck and 0.2° for EPIC.

Abstract

Cosmic Microwave Background experiments must achieve very accurate calibration of their polarization reference frame to avoid biasing the cosmological parameters. In particular, a wrong or inaccurate calibration might mimic the presence of a gravitational wave background, or a signal from cosmological birefringence, a phenomenon characteristic of several non-standard, symmetry breaking theories of electrodynamics that allow for \textit{in vacuo} rotation if the polarization direction of the photon. Noteworthly, several authors have claimed that the BOOMERanG 2003 (B2K) published polarized power spectra of the CMB may hint at cosmological birefringence. Such analyses, however, do not take into account the reported calibration uncertainties of the BOOMERanG focal plane. We develop a formalism to include this effect and apply it to the BOOMERanG dataset, finding a cosmological rotation angle $\alpha=-4.3^\circ\pm4.1^\circ$. We also investigate the expected performances of future space borne experiment, finding that an overall miscalibration larger then $1^\circ$ for Planck and $0.2\circ$ for EPIC, if not properly taken into account, will produce a bias on the constraints on the cosmological parameters and could misleadingly suggest the presence of a GW background.