The cosmic microwave background temperature bispectrum from scalar perturbations induced by primordial magnetic fields

Abstract

We evaluate the angular bispectrum of the CMB temperature anisotropy at large angular scale due to a stochastic background of primordial magnetic fields. The shape of non-Gaussianity depends on the spectral index of the magnetic field power spectrum and is peaked in the squeezed configuration for a scale-invariant magnetic spectrum. By using the large angular part of the bispectrum generated by magnetic fields, the present bounds on non-Gaussianity set a limit on the amplitude of the primordial magnetic field of the order of (10) nGauss for the scale-invariant case and (20) nGauss for the other spectral indexes. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA.