Current and Future Constraints on Primordial Magnetic Fields

Abstract

We present new limits on the amplitude of potential primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) using temperature and polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from Planck, BICEP2/Keck Array, POLARBEAR, and SPTpol. We reduce twofold the 95% CL upper limit on the CMB anisotropy power due to a nearly-scale-invariant PMF, with an allowed B-mode power at $\ell=1500$ of $D_{\ell=1500}^{BB} < 0.071 \mu K^2$ for Planck versus $D_{\ell=1500}^{BB} < 0.034 \mu K^2$ for the combined dataset. We also forecast the expected limits from soon-to-deploy CMB experiments (like SPT-3G, Adv. ACTpol, or the Simons Array) and the proposed CMB-S4 experiment. Future CMB experiments should dramatically reduce the current uncertainties, by one order of magnitude for the near-term experiments and two orders of magnitude for the CMB-S4 experiment. The constraints from CMB-S4 have the potential to rule out much of the parameter space for PMFs.