Joint constraints on cosmic birefringence and early dark energy from ACT, Planck, DESI, and PantheonPlus
astro-ph.CO, gr-qc, hep-ph, hep-th
Submitted: 2026-01-20
Updated: 2026-08-05
Comments: 22 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in JCAP
Journal ref: JCAP 09 (2026) 052
DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2026/09/052
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: With the increasing number of high-precision astronomical observations, physical quantities that were previously inaccessible to accurate calculations, such as cosmic birefringence, have once again
Terminology
Abstract
With the increasing number of high-precision astronomical observations, physical quantities that were previously inaccessible to accurate calculations, such as cosmic birefringence, have once again become a focal point of interest. Such phenomena induce a nonvanishing cross-correlation between the E - and B-mode polarizations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), thereby providing a direct observational signature of parity violation. The Chern-Simons coupling between the scalar field in early dark energy (EDE) models and CMB photons is regarded as a plausible mechanism for generating cosmic birefringence. Recent data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) deliver EB measurements at higher multipole moments than those previously achieved by Planck, while DESI and PantheonPlus datasets provide new and stringent constraints on the late-time expansion history. Using a joint analysis of Planck, DESI DR1, Pantheon+, and ACT data, we perform a full-parameter constraint on the cosmic birefringence effects induced by the EDE-CMB photon coupling. Our results favor a higher Hubble constant, H 0 = 76.9+2.9-2.5, km,s-1,Mpc-1, and a relatively large EDE fraction, f EDE = 0.232+0.074-0.047. By comparing the cosmological evolution of this model across different data combinations, we find that the ACT- EB data combined with Planck + DESI + PantheonPlus provide good constraints to both early- and late-Universe observations.
Sources
- New Extraction of the Cosmic Birefringence from the Planck 2018 Polarization Data
- Improved Constraints on Cosmic Birefringence from the WMAP and Planck Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Data
- Cosmological Signature of New Parity-Violating Interactions
- Gravitational lensing effect on cosmic birefringence
- Cosmic birefringence tomography with polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect
- Axionic defects in the CMB: birefringence and gravitational waves
- Is Cosmic Birefringence model-dependent?
- A New Solution for the Observed Isotropic Cosmic Birefringence Angle and its Implications for the Anisotropic Counterpart through a Boltzmann Approach
- Exact CMB B-mode power spectrum from anisotropic cosmic birefringence
- Parity-Odd Power Spectra: Concise Statistics for Cosmological Parity Violation
- Planck PR4 (NPIPE) map-space cosmic birefringence
- LiteBIRD Science Goals and Forecasts: constraining isotropic cosmic birefringence
- Constraints on Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence from CMB B-mode Polarization
- Planck Constraints on Axion-Like Particles through Isotropic Cosmic Birefringence
- Planck constraints on the scale dependence of isotropic cosmic birefringence
- Resolving the negative effective neutrino mass parameter with cosmic birefringence
- Cosmic Birefringence from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Data Release 6
- Searching for CPT Violation with Cosmic Microwave Background Data from WMAP and BOOMERANG
- Cosmological CPT Violation, Baryon/Leptogenesis and CMB Polarization
- Cosmological CPT violating effect on CMB polarization
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