Speaker
Description
When coupled to electromagnetism via a Chern-Simons interaction, axion-like particles produce a rotation of the plane of linear polarization of photons known as cosmic birefringence (CB). Recent measurements obtained from WMAP and Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization data hint at the existence of an isotropic CB angle of β≈0.3º. Although still under scrutiny for their dependence on the modeling of Galactic dust emission, these results currently exclude β=0 with a statistical significance of 3.6σ.
LiteBIRD, the Lite (Light) satellite for the study of B-mode polarization and Inflation from cosmic background Radiation Detection, provides the perfect avenue for confirming the nature of such CB signal. In this talk, I will comment on LiteBIRD prospects for detecting CB and present the various analysis pipelines for the measurement of isotropic CB, both in real and harmonic space, that are currently being developed within the LiteBIRD collaboration. The complementarity of the different analyses considered will ensure that LiteBIRD is able to achieve a CB measurement robust against Galactic foreground emission and instrumental systematics.
