CMB mode coupling with isotropic polarization rotation

Abstract

We provide a new analysis technique to measure the effect of the isotropic polarization rotation, induced by e.g. the isotropic cosmic birefringence from axion-like particles and a miscalibration of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization angle, via mode coupling in the CMB. Several secondary effects such as gravitational lensing and CMB optical-depth anisotropies lead to mode coupling in observed CMB anisotropies, i.e. non-zero off-diagonal elements in the observed CMB covariance. To derive the mode coupling, however, we usually assume no parity violation in the observed CMB anisotropies. We first derive a new contribution to the CMB mode coupling arising from parity violation in observed CMB. Since the isotropic polarization rotation leads to parity violation in the observed CMB anisotropies, we then discuss the use of the new mode coupling for constraining the isotropic polarization angle. We find that constraints on the isotropic polarization angle by measuring the new mode-coupling contribution are comparable to that using the EB cross-power spectrum in future high-sensitivity polarization experiments such as CMB-S4 and LiteBIRD. Thus, this technique can be used to cross-check results obtained by the use of the EB cross-power spectrum.