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Searching for CPT Violation with Cosmic Microwave Background Data from WMAP and BOOMERANG

Bo Feng·Mingzhe Li·Jun-Qing Xia·Xuelei Chen·Xinmin Zhang
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Abstract

We search for signatures of Lorentz and $CPT$ violations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies by using the WMAP and the 2003 flight of BOOMERANG (B03) data. We note that if the Lorentz and $CPT$ symmetries are broken by a Chern-Simons term in the effective lagrangian, which couples the dual electromagnetic field strength tensor to an external four-vector, the polarization vectors of propagating CMB photons will get rotated. Using the WMAP data alone, one could put an interesting constraint on the size of such a term. Combined with the B03 data, we found that a nonzero rotation angle of the photons is mildly favored: $Δα= -6.0^{+4.0}_{-4.0}$ $^{+3.9}_{-3.7}$ deg (1, 2 $σ$).

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Bo Feng, Mingzhe Li, Jun-Qing Xia, Xuelei Chen, Xinmin Zhang. 2006-06-08. Searching for CPT Violation with Cosmic Microwave Background Data from WMAP and BOOMERANG. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.96.221302

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