Polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background from Non-Uniform Reionization

Abstract

We study the signal in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization anisotropy resulting from patchy reionization. It is well known that the primordial polarization of the CMB is very sensitive to the details of reionization. Combining a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, in which the optical depth to the reionization epoch is in the range 0.014 to 0.048, with a high resolution N-body simulation we find that reionization generates a peak with amplitude 0.05~0.15 \mu K at large angular scales. The position of this peak reveals the size of the horizon at reionization, whilst its amplitude is a measure of the optical depth to reionization. On small scales, ionized patches prior to full reionization create a second order polarization signal due to the coupling of the free electron density fluctuation with the quadrupole moment of the temperature anisotropy. Careful study reveals that the coupling generates the same power spectra for electric and magnetic modes, whose amplitudes of polarization anisotropies from this process are predicted to be ~10nK. The amplitude depends strongly on the total baryon density $\Omega_b$ and on the spatial correlations of the free electron density in the ionized regions, and weakly on the fraction of ionizing photons able to escape their source galaxy, $f_{esc}$. The first- and second-order signals are therefore sensitive to the details of how the reionization occurred. Detection of these signals will place important constraints on the reionization history of the Universe.