Is the universe birefringent?

17 Jun 2002

Is the universe birefringent? That is, does universebehave like a crystal in which light moving in one direction acts differently from light going in another direction?

Radio waves from distant galaxies must pass through the vast reaches of an intergalactic medium filled with stray magnetic fields and a tenuous plasma of ions and electrons. Through a well-known phenomenon called the Faraday effect, these ions and fields in the cosmic prairie subtly rotate the polarization of the radio waves on their way toward Earth.

Although the effect is slight, it has been measured in the case of light coming from many galaxies; the effect is proportional to the magnetic field strengths and ion densities, as well as the square of the light's wavelength. (Typically about 5- 8% of the light from a galaxy is plane polarized, most of this in the form of synchrotron radiation.)

Now two researchers, Borge Nodland at the University of Rochester and John Ralston at the University of Kansas, have studied polarization rotation data for 160 galaxies and have perceived that in addition to the Faraday effect, there seems to be an extra mysterious angular dependency at work. This anomaly would seem to challenge some important physics concepts, such as the notion that there is no preferred direction in space and the notion that space itself is isotropic (the same in all directions) or homogeneous (the same in all places). One possible explanation might be the existence of "domain walls" between different realms of the cosmos, as prescribed in certain particle physics theories, the researchers note in the upcoming Physical Review of Lettters