Intro
(Feel free to skip the intro it doesn’t address the core topic) Some might disagree, but the idea that the CMB is generated by cosmic dust (ISM and/or IGM or oort clouds), is possible and not falsified. Moreover it appears there is a reverse coincidence problem, meaning that the chemical density, the carbon abundance, the dwarf stars surface temperature, the observed dust size range and the electron density, which all heavily constrain the viability of CMB as dust radiation, all empirically match the constraints (AKA seems finetuned for CMB as dust radiation).
Another key paradox besides the reverse coincidence problem, is shown by doing a simple reduction ad absurdum, Any cosmology must deal with the empirically confirmed fact (via e.g. FRBs) that both the ISM and the IGM are electron and dust rich, IIRC the majority of the baryonic matter in the universe is within the ISM/IGM (AKA not in stars). Therefore, both dust microwave emissions (rethermalization) and obscuration must be potent effects even if the dust configuration were to have a different temperature than the CMB. It would also appears as a distortion. The basic fact that we can observe a 2.7k background that should be impossible to see, drown under the dust radiation and the fact that we don’t observe damping, shows that the only way to explain the CMB we observe, is either to imagine the universe being dust free (falsified) or to consider the CMB is regenerated with distance (via dust or via another mechanism) or to consider the CMB as having a nearby source. The missing dust signature is over 35 times the sensitivity of our instruments meaning the primordial interpretation of the CMB is robustly falsified https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04771 Discussion about this here
Cosmic birefringence
The idea that the CMB could be generated by cosmic dust is “old” moreover they have often investigated wether not only the temperature can be matched (e.g. via carbon) but also the polarization (e.g. via Iron) as discussed in this paper
I believe I am the second person on this planet to directly ask a more specific question:
Can cosmic birefringence be explained by dust?
And the first to systematically ask:
Can cosmic birefringence be explained by dust crystals?
The rotation of light in the presence of Cosmic Birefringence increases over the distance of travel and is thus expected to have the largest rotation from far away objects
So not at all my area of expertise but Cosmic Birefringence denote a pattern of rotation of the polarized light of the CMB. The Cosmic Birefringence is real, detected at 99.2% likelihood and consistently found in multiple datas including Planck 2018, Planck PR4 and also BAO observations (BOSS, no idea for DESI DR1). And most importantly, it is not predicted at all in a primordial CMB, hence this recent discovery is a major area of investigation for new physics.
I looked at the litterature and I was not able to find a single paper compatible with LCDM that relied on known physical mechanisms. The only papers that attempts to explain the observed birefringence require novel physics such as new neutrinos interactions or a new particle.
indicate the existence of a new particle that is lighter than the electroweak scale and feebly interacting with the SM particles.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.09152 Indeed this papers categorically claims
no Standard Model particles can explain the reported value under the standard cosmological evolution.
Again not my are of expertise, but when I look about birefringence, I see that it is a well known physical property, that is most often caused by crystals.
Indeed you can see both tables here listing common birefringent crystals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birefringence#Common_birefringent_materials So the question is: can birefringent materials explain the cosmic birefringence (in my neophyte opinion it is the exact same concept) And if so, what kind(s) of materials or topology would be needed? They lists such materials as uniaxial or biaxial, what is the arity of the axiality of cosmic birefringence?
The next logical question is are the crystals abundant in cosmic dust, birefringent? The principal constituents of (known) cosmic dust grains are (as seen table 2): SiO C Mg2SiO4 MgO Fe2SiO4 Fe3O4
While I don’t find any direct correspondance with the known uniaxial birefringent materials I see some intriguing molecular similarities, especially: Via Silicon monoxide abundance quartz SiO2 beryl Be3Al2(SiO3)6 silicon carbide SiC zircon, high ZrSiO4 also worth mentioning magnesium fluoride MgF2 calcite CaCO3 under biaxial epsom salt MgSO4·7H2O olivine (Mg,Fe)2SiO4 topaz Al2SiO4(F,OH)2
Therefore intuitively it seems very possible that those birefringent crystals could massivelly form (Quartz seems like the most simple one) Moreover it has been found that cosmic dust crystallization can be catalyzed by high temperature or high pressure/velocities (e.g. plasma) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103508002315
Hence CMB birefringence as generated by cosmic dust birefringent crystals seems intuitively like the simplest explanation and is coherent with CMB as dust radiation. There has been only one single paper (it seems) that has investigated this primordial question: https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.10908 They shows that nanoclusters of ice (water) could reproduce the cosmic birefringence and indeed ice is listed as a birefringent crystal. (Note that ice abundance while well known in asteroids, has recently been possibly shown for comets too. edit nevermind abundance was already known, it was about the deuterium earth ratio Also recentlly imaged water vapor abundance near a star https://www.ndtv.com/science/scientists-find-oceans-of-water-on-planet-forming-star-5150940 )
Symmetry-breaking terahertz (THz) vibrations of cosmic water nanoclusters, ejected from amorphous water-ice-coated cosmic dust to interstellar space [1], can produce the dipole-moment anisotropy necessary for their birefringence property.
They also do a very weird connection
it is practically equal in frequency to the cutoff value, 1.7 THz of vacuum fluctuations proposed to be responsible for dark energy [1] Symmetry breaking of the water-cluster dodecahedra via the Pseudo Jahn-Teller effect [16] also produces the dipole moments Anisotropic dipole moments lead directly to the birefringence of water nanoclusters Thus, the birefringence of cosmic water nanoclusters ejected by cosmic dust can explain, at least qualitatively, the CMB birefringence from a condensed-matter point of view, instead of by nonbaryonic particles such as AXIONS [20,21].
The author also shows there can be special physical effects at play such as Pseudo Jahn-Teller effect. It seems the birefringent effect of other crystals, especially quartz, remains to explore for the CMB. Hence I invite readers to write a paper about it (since I don’t publish papers) as it is a key question and birefringence is a hot topic in cosmology. The next question is: assuming most of the CMB birefringence is generated by dust crystals, does this imply the necessary quantity for those effects, would allow to more precisely answer what percentage of the CMB is generated by dust rethermalization, same for its polarization and most importantly, would such a quantitative analysis allows a more precise bound on the missing dust opacification signature ? Which is one of the most important paper in modern cosmology https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.04771
bonus papers: precise measure of birefringence in galaxies (future probe with record accuracy) https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.18568 birefringence via neutrino https://inspirehep.net/literature/768971
Cosmic birefringence is a form of parity (axial) violation, which might be or not related to other searchs of parity violation (cosmological principle, antimatter asymmetry gap, weak force, etc), I also wonder wether it is linked to the CMB and universe dipole asymmetry. There are studies, while they don’t consider dust mechanisms per se, have observationally investigated the effect of dust on birefringence, this study shows parity violation and empirical correlation with cosmic dust https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.00120 related https://www.prophy.science/article/161304662/ dust supersonic turbulence: https://www.prophy.science/article/177688663/ birefringence caused by interstellar dust filaments misaligment https://www.prophy.science/article/159349739/ about parity violation: https://www.prophy.science/article/176725848-Cosmic-Birefringence-as-a-Probe-of-Fundamental-Parity-Violation/ possible birefringence from synchrotron https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.56.3527 https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.00849 or dichroism? dust via magnetism https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11486357/
other https://www.prophy.science/article/178067462-Imprints-of-the-Local-Bubble-and-Dust-Complexity-on-Polarized-Dust-Emission/ https://www.prophy.science/article/175994867-Understanding-the-galactic-polarized-signal-in-the-quest-for-new-fundamental-physics-in-the-cosmic-microwave-background/ https://www.prophy.science/article/177409830/ observational bias in BOSS (unlikely in Planck) https://www.prophy.science/article/175529055/ https://www.prophy.science/article/165916549/ https://www.prophy.science/article/160932036/ https://www.prophy.science/article/169868970-The-Atacama-Cosmology-Telescope-Galactic-Dust-Structure-and-the-Cosmic-PAH-Background-in-Cross-correlation-with-WISE/ https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.07655 frequency independent https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.13347 foreground https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.10490
We find a remarkable resemblance between this temperature model map based on nearby galaxies and the Planck CMB map. Out of 1000 simulated maps, none of them show such a strong correlation with the foreground map over both large and small angular scales.
Alternative explanations for birefringence
dipole cosmology ? https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.16177
There exist an idea, first popularized by Gamow, that seems a bit ridiculous, but upon closer inspection, seems extremely intriguing. It is the question(s) about wether the universe is rotating, and/or are there specific aligments in the universe? https://www.prophy.science/article/9469090-Rotating-Universe/
ONE of the most mysterious results of the astronomical studies of the universe lies in the fact that all successive degrees of accumulation of matter, such as planets, stars and galaxies, are found in the state of more or less rapid axial rotation.
The rotation of stars themselves (in particular that of B-stars) can be presumably reduced to their origin from the rotating gas-masses which form the spiral arms of various galaxies. But what is the origin of galactic rotation?
electrons, planets, stars and galaxies all rotate. Many clusters have been found to rotate too. I invite readers to read the citations of Gamow paper, there are many intriguing empirical results, notably Lios Shamir has done countless dataset analysises all consistently showing a large-scale alignment of galaxy angular momentum. Those observations must be explained and are completely unexplained in todays cosmologies despite being universally observed. There are likely key insights to derive from those observations. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.13866 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Simple-Direct-Empirical-Observation-of-Systematic-Shamir/74fc4c52cc7f52447152277470bee05c5b925783
So my question is: could this aligment bias (empirical) or a rotating universe (theoretical) explain the CMB birefringence independently of cosmic dust? Also rotating universe is possibly related to: III.6.5 The angular momentum catastrophe >The angular momentum catastrophe (van den Bosch et al. 2001) concerns a catastrophic angular momentum loss of gas during disk galaxies formation in Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) (Monaghan 1992) sim- ulations. The formed disks in simulations according to the predictions of ΛCDM have smaller scale lengths by a factor of 2 − 3 compared with observed ones (Bullock et al. 2001).
and to III.10 Oscillating signals in short range gravity experiments >short range gravity ex- periments has indicated the presence of an oscillating force signal with sub-millimeter wavelength cf https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.05208
note that multiple papers in rotating universes shows that such kinetic rotation behave precisely like dark energy https://www.sciencepubco.com/index.php/IJAA/article/view/6582/2410 note about modified inertia according to Serkan Zorba, ‘dark energy’ and ‘dark matter’ both are inertial effects [54],[55]. Here is a concise formalism of a rotational and self similar universe with multiple planck constants https://arxiv.org/abs/1004.4837