Magnetic fields from inflation: The CMB temperature anisotropies

Abstract

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies from primordial magnetic fields are studied. In addition to the known passive and the compensated mode we discuss an inflationary magnetic mode in the curvature perturbation, present when magnetic fields are generated during inflation. This mode is absent if the generation mechanism is causal, e.g. a phase transition. We compute and discuss the effect of this mode on the observed CMB anisotropy spectrum, in comparison with the passive and compensated ones. We find that it dominates the CMB anisotropy, and consequently leads to stronger constraints on the amplitude $B_{1\,{\rm Mpc}}$ and spectral index $n_B$ of the magnetic field than what usually found in CMB analyses from the compensated mode. This happens in particular for spectral indexes $n_B>-3$: the inflationary magnetic mode is always scale invariant, therefore through this mode even a magnetic field with a spectrum which is not scale invariant can leave a detectable signal in the CMB at large scales.