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 xi, 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 -0.097 +/- 0.075 at the 68% c.l. Moreover, we forecast on the sensitivity to xi 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).
Planck-scale sensitivity of CMB polarization data / Gubitosi, Giulia; Pagano, Luca. - In: NUCLEAR PHYSICS B-PROCEEDINGS SUPPLEMENTS. - ISSN 0920-5632. - 194:C(2009), pp. 69-75. (Intervento presentato al convegno Galileo-Galilei-Institute Conference on Dark Matter and Dark Energy tenutosi a Florence, ITALY nel JAN 19-MAR 12, 2009) [10.1016/j.nuclphysbps.2009.07.027].
Planck-scale sensitivity of CMB polarization data
GUBITOSI, Giulia;PAGANO, LUCA
2009
Abstract
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 xi, 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 -0.097 +/- 0.075 at the 68% c.l. Moreover, we forecast on the sensitivity to xi 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).I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
