Skewon field and cosmic wave propagation

Abstract: For the study of the gravitational coupling of electromagnetism and the equivalence principle, we have used the spacetime constitutive tensor density {chi}ijkl, and discovered the nonmetric (axion) part (A){chi}ijkl (equal to {phi}eijkl) of {chi}ijkl worthy investigation. Since we have used Lagrangian formalism, {chi}ijkl is effectively symmetric under the interchange of index pairs, ij and kl, and has 21 independent degrees of freedom. Hehl, Obukhov and Rubilar have started from charge-flux formalism to study electromagnetism, discovered the antisymmetric part (Sk){chi}ijkl (15 degrees of freedom) of {chi}ijkl under the interchange of index pairs ij and kl worthy investigation, and called it skewon field. In this paper, we study the propagation of the Hehl-Obukhov-Rubilar skewon field in weak gravity field/dilute matter or with weak violation of the Einstein Equivalence Principle (EEP), and further classify it into Type I and Type II skewons. From the dispersion relation we show that no dissipation/no amplification condition implies that the additional skewon field must be of Type II. For Type I skewon field, the dissipation/amplification is proportional to the frequency and the CMB spectrum would deviate from Planck spectrum. From the high precision agreement of the CMB spectrum to 2.755 K Planck spectrum, we constrain the Type I cosmic skewon field (SkI){chi}ijkl to less than a few x 10-35. The skewon part of constitutive tensor constructed from asymmetric metric is of Type II, hence is allowed. This study may also find applications in macroscopic electrodynamics in the case of laser pumped medium or dissipative medium.