CMB statistical anisotropy from noncommutative gravitational waves

Primordial statistical anisotropy is a key indicator to investigate early Universe models and has been probed by the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. In this paper, we examine tensor-mode CMB fluctuations generated from anisotropic gravitational waves, parametrised by Ph(k) = P h(0)(k) [ 1 + ∑LMfL (k) g LM YLM (k̂)], where Ph(0)(k) is the usual scale-invariant power spectrum. Such anisotropic tensor fluctuations may arise from an inflationary model with noncommutativity of fields. It is verified that in this model, an isotropic component and a quadrupole asymmetry with f0 (k) = f2(k) ∝ k-2 are created and hence highly red-tilted off-diagonal components arise in the CMB power spectra, namely ℓ2 = ℓ1 ± 2 in TT, TE, EE and BB, and ℓ2 = ℓ1 ± 1 in TB and EB. We find that B-mode polarisation is more sensitive to such signals than temperature and E-mode polarisation due to the smallness of large-scale cosmic variance and we can potentially measure g00 = 30 and g2M = 58 at 68% CL in a cosmic-variance-limited experiment. Such a level of signal may be measured in a PRISM like experiment, while the instrumental noise contaminates it in the Planck experiment. These results imply that it is impossible to measure the noncommutative parameter if it is small enough for the perturbative treatment to be valid. Our formalism and methodology for dealing with the CMB tensor statistical anisotropy are general and straightforwardly applicable to other early Universe models. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab srl.