Statistical isotropy violation of CMB Polarization sky due to Lorentz boost

Abstract

In the frame of a moving observer, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuation exhibits violation of statistical isotropy (SI). The SI violation effect from our local motion on CMB temperature fluctuation has been measured in the recent Planck results P. A. R. Ade et al., arXiv:1303.5083 [Astron. Astrophys. (to be published)]; N. Aghanim et al., arXiv:1303.5087. We calculate the effect of our local motion with velocity (β≡|v|/c=1.23×10⁻³) on the CMB polarization field. The Lorentz transformation of the polarization field leads to aberration in the direction of incoming photons and also modulation of the Stokes parameters, which results in mixing of power between different CMB multipoles. We show that for small values of β, the effect on the angular power spectra that correspond to the diagonal terms in the spherical harmonic space is at O(β²). But nonzero off-diagonal terms at the linear order in β could provide a measurable signature of SI violation in the bipolar spherical harmonic (BipoSH) representation. We also calculate the measurability of β from polarization maps from experiments like Planck and PRISM. It is possible to measure β from the ideal, cosmic variance limited BipoSH spectra of EE, TE, BB, but not in EB and TB. With the instrumental noise and angular resolution of Planck, it is not possible to measure β with high statistical significance from BipoSH spectra of polarization. PRISM can measure β with high significance in both EE and TEB ipoSH spectra, but not in BB, EB and TB BipoSH spectra.