First Detection of the Acoustic Oscillation Phase Shift Expected from the Cosmic Neutrino Background
Follin, Brent; Knox, Lloyd; Millea, Marius; Pan, Zhen
United States
Abstract
The unimpeded relativistic propagation of cosmological neutrinos prior to recombination of the baryon-photon plasma alters gravitational potentials and therefore the details of the time-dependent gravitational driving of acoustic oscillations. We report here a first detection of the resulting shifts in the temporal phase of the oscillations, which we infer from their signature in the cosmic microwave background temperature power spectrum.