Copyright © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Is the cosmic microwave background circularly polarized?
Received 6 December 2002;
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Abstract
The primordial anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are linearly polarized via Compton-scattering. The Faraday conversion process during the propagation of polarized CMB photons through regions of the large-scale structure containing magnetized relativistic plasma, such as galaxy clusters, will lead to a circularly polarized contribution. Though the resulting Stokes-V parameter is of order 10−9 at frequencies of 10 GHz, the contribution can potentially reach the level of total Stokes-U at low frequencies due to the cubic dependence on the wavelength. In future, the detection of circular polarization of CMB can be used as a potential probe of the physical properties associated with relativistic particle populations in large-scale structures.







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