Photon-photon interactions as a source of CMB circular polarization
Abstract
Photon-photon interactions mediated by the neutral hydrogen background can transform plane polarization into circular polarization, through completely forward processes, [gamma+gamma+atom-> gamma+ gamma+atom], in which only the photon polarizations are changed. The ratio of circular to plane polarization intensities is predicted to be at the level of several times 10-5 for some regions of angular size less than 1/300 and with large plane polarizations.
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