A constraint on Planck-scale modifications to electrodynamics with CMB polarization data

作者：Gubitosi Giulia^*; Pagano Luca; Amelino Camelia Giovanni; Melchiorri Alessandro; Cooray Asantha

来源：Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2009, 2009(8): 021.

DOI：10.1088/1475-7516/2009/08/021

• CMBR polarisation
• cosmological parameters from CMBR
• quantum gravity phenomenology
• CMBR theory

We show that the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization data gathered by the BOOMERanG 2003 flight and WMAP provide an opportunity to investigate in-vacuo birefringence, of a type expected in some quantum pictures of space-time, with a sensitivity that extends even beyond the desired Planck-scale energy. In order to render this constraint more transparent we rely on a well studied phenomenological model of quantum-gravity-induced birefringence, in which one easily establishes that effects introduced at the Planck scale would amount to values of a dimensionless parameter, denoted by., with respect to the Planck energy which are roughly of order 1. By combining BOOMERanG and WMAP data we estimate xi similar or equal to -0.110 +/- 0.075 at the 68% c.l. Moreover, we forecast on the sensitivity to. achievable by future CMB polarization experiments (PLANCK, Spider, EPIC), which, in the absence of systematics, will be at the 1-sigma confidence of 8.5 x 10(-4) (PLANCK), 6.1 x 10(-3) (Spider), and 1.0 x 10(-5) (EPIC) respectively. The cosmic variance-limited sensitivity from CMB is 6.1 x 10(-6).

• 出版日期2009-8