Searching for CPT Violation with Cosmic Microwave Background Data from WMAP and BOOMERANG

Abstract

We search for signatures of Lorentz and $CPT$ violations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization anisotropies by using the WMAP and the 2003 flight of BOOMERANG (B03) data. We note that if the Lorentz and $CPT$ symmetries are broken by a Chern-Simons term in the effective lagrangian, which couples the dual electromagnetic field strength tensor to an external four-vector, the polarization vectors of propagating CMB photons will get rotated. Using the WMAP data alone, one could put an interesting constraint on the size of such a term. Combined with the B03 data, we found that a nonzero rotation angle of the photons is mildly favored: $\Delta \alpha= -6.0^{+4.0}_{-4.0}$ $^{+3.9}_{-3.7}$ deg (1, 2 $\sigma$).