Establishing the origin of CMB B-mode polarization

Understand

Primordial gravitational waves leave a characteristic imprint on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in the form of $B$-mode polarization.

• Photons are also deflected by large scale gravitational waves which intervene between the source screen and our telescopes, resulting in curl-type gravitational lensing.
• Gravitational waves present at the epoch of reionization contribute to both effects, thereby leading to a non-vanishing cross-correlation between $B$-mode polarization and curl lensing of the CMB.
• Observing such a cross correlation would be very strong evidence that an observation of $B$-mode polarization was due to the presence of large scale gravitational waves, as opposed to astrophysical foregrounds or experimental systematic effects.