We apply a recently developed method to directly measure the gravitational lensing power spectrum from CMB power spectra to the Planck satellite data. This method allows us to analyze the tension between the temperature power spectrum and lens reconstruction in a model independent way. Even when allowing for arbitrary variations in the lensing power spectrum, the tension remains at the 2.4σ level. By separating the lensing and unlensed high redshift information in the CMB power spectra, we also show that under ΛCDM the two are in tension at a similar level whereas the unlensed information is consistent with lensing reconstruction. These anomalies are driven by the smoother acoustic peaks relative to ΛCDM at ∼ 1250 − 1500. Both tensions relax slightly when polarization data are considered. This technique also isolates the one combination of the lensing power spectrum multipoles that the Planck CMB power spectra currently constrain and can be straightforwardly generalized to future data when CMB power spectra constrain multiple aspects of lensing which are themselves correlated with lensing reconstruction.
Chiral symmetry is maximally violated in weak interactions [1], and such microscopic asymmetries in the early Universe might leave observable imprints on astrophysical scales without violating the cosmological principle. In this Letter, we propose a helicity measurement to detect primordial chiral violation. We point out that observations of halo-galaxy angular momentum directions (spins), which are frozen in during the galaxy formation process, provide a fossil chiral observable. From the clustering mode of large scale structure of the Universe, we construct a spin mode in Lagrangian space and show in simulations that it is a good probe of halo-galaxy spins. In standard model, a strong symmetric correlation between the left and right helical components of this spin mode and galaxy spins is expected. Measurements of these correlations will be sensitive to chiral breaking, providing a direct test of chiral symmetry breaking in the early Universe.
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