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# Probing Cosmic Birefringence with Polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich Tomography

Nanoom Lee, Selim C. Hotinli, Marc Kamionkowski
arXiv:2207.05687

Submitted on 12 July 2022

## Abstract

If the physics behind dark energy and/or dark matter violates the parity symmetry assumed in the standard cosmological paradigm, the linear polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons can rotate due to their coupling to the dark sector. Recent 3$\sigma$ hints of this 'cosmic birefringence' in the EB spectrum of the CMB polarization motivates us to pursue new directions to independently validate and characterize the signal. Here, we explore the prospects to probe cosmic birefringence from small-scale fluctuations in the CMB using polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich (pSZ) tomography. We find that pSZ can be used to infer the redshift dependence of cosmic birefringence and also help calibrate the instrumental polarization orientation. To illustrate the prospects, we show that pSZ tomography may probe an axion-like dark energy model with masses ${m}_{\varphi }\lesssim {10}^{-32}$eV with $\mathcal{O}\left(0.1\right)$ degrees of rotation between reionization and recombination.

## Preprint

Comment: 10+3 pages, 10 figures, comments welcome

Subjects: Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics; High Energy Physics - Phenomenology