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Primordial magnetic fields and CMB anisotropies
Author(s) -
Subramanian K.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
astronomische nachrichten
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.394
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1521-3994
pISSN - 0004-6337
DOI - 10.1002/asna.200610542
Subject(s) - cosmic microwave background , physics , anisotropy , astrophysics , polarization (electrochemistry) , redshift , magnetic field , universe , reionization , computational physics , galaxy , optics , chemistry , quantum mechanics
Possible signatures of primordial magnetic fields on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies are reviewed. The signals that could be searched for include excess temperature anisotropies particularly at small angular scales below the Silk damping scale, B‐mode polarization, and non‐Gaussian statistics. A field at a few nG level produces temperature anisotropies at the 5 µK level, and B‐mode polarization anisotropies 10 times smaller, and is therefore potentially detectable via the CMB anisotropies. An even smaller field, with B 0 < 0.1 nG, could lead to structure formation at high redshift z > 15, and hence naturally explain an early re‐ionization of the Universe. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)