Rotation of Linear Polarization Plane and Circular Polarization from Cosmological Pseudoscalar Fields

We discuss the rotation of the linear polarization plane and the production of circular polarization generated by a cosmological pseudoscalar field. We compute analytically and numerically the propagation of the Stokes parameters from the last scattering surface for an oscillating and a monotonic decreasing pseudoscalar field. For the models studied in this paper, we show the comparison between the widely used approximation in which the linear polarization rotation angle is constant in time and the exact result. © 2009 The American Physical Society.