Ferte, A; Grain, J; (2014) Detecting chiral gravity with the pure pseudospectrum reconstruction of the cosmic microwave background polarized anisotropies. Physical Review D , 89 (10) , Article 103516. 10.1103/PhysRevD.89.103516.

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Abstract

We consider the possible detection of parity violation at the linear level in gravity using polarized anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background. Since such a parity violation would lead to non- zero TB and EB correlations, this makes those odd-parity angular power spectra a potential probe of parity violation in the gravitational sector. These spectra are modeled incorporating the impact of lensing and we explore their possible detection in the context of small-scale (balloon-borne or ground-based) experiments and a future satellite mission dedicated to B-mode detection. We assess the statistical uncertainties on their reconstruction using mode-counting and a (more realistic) pure pseudospectrum estimator approach. Those uncertainties are then translated into constraints on the level of parity asymmetry. We found that detecting chiral gravity is impossible for ongoing small-scale experiments. However, for a satellite-like mission, a parity asymmetry of 50% could be detected at 68% of confidence level (at least, depending on the value of the tensor-to-scalar ratio), and a parity asymmetry of 100% is measurable with at least a confidence level of 95%. We also assess the impact of a possible miscalibration of the orientation of the polarized detectors, leading to spurious TB and EB cross-correlations. We show that in the context of pseudospectrum estimation of the angular power spectra, self-calibration of this angle could significantly reduce the statistical significance of the measured level of parity asymmetry (by e.g. a factor ∼ 2:4 for a miscalibration angle of 1 degree). For chiral gravity and assuming a satellite mission dedicated to primordial B- mode, a non detection of the TB and EB correlation would translate into an upper bound on parity violation of 39% at 95% confidence level for a tensor-to-scalar ratio of 0.2, excluding values of the (imaginary) Barbero-Immirzi parameter comprised between 0.2 and 4.9 at 95% CL.

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