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Thomson scattering generates linear Cosmic microwave background polarization when the incident radiation has a photon quadrupole. The cross-section prefers electric fields perpendicular to the scattering direction. Contributions from an isotropic field cancel, and a dipole alone does not supply the required spin-two angular pattern. Schematically the outgoing Stokes combination is proportional towhich selects the incident quadrupolar angular dependence. Tight coupling nearly isotropizes the radiation, making the quadrupole small; it develops when the photon mean free path becomes finite near decoupling. At leading tight-coupling order its size scales as $(k/\dot{\kappa })v_{\gamma }$.

The polarization is therefore weaker than the temperature anisotropy: a characteristic amplitude is of order a few percent to roughly ten percent of the temperature signal, or several microkelvin compared with temperature fluctuations of several tens of microkelvin on acoustic scales. This is an order-of-magnitude comparison, not a scale-independent ratio of every power-spectrum multipole.

The photon monopole follows the acoustic displacement, approximately $\cos (k{r}_s)$; the velocity sourcing the quadrupole follows $\sin (k{r}_s)$. Hence polarization maxima occur near displacement zeros, between the main temperature peaks. In the leading coherent-oscillator approximation the shift is half the peak spacing, $\Delta \ell /2$, although projection and gravitational driving modify exact locations. Scalar perturbations generate E-mode polarization at linear order, not B-mode polarization. Tensor perturbations and lensing can give B modes, and reionization generates an additional large-angle polarization feature.

The continuity equation and the cosine solution givewhen the potentials are constant. Part (d) then impliesSince Cosmic microwave background polarization is sourced by the local quadrupole at last scattering,The monopole contribution to the CMB temperature oscillates as $\cos (k{r}_{s\ast })$, so its acoustic extrema occur near $k{r}_{s\ast }=m\pi$, whereas polarization extrema occur near $k{r}_{s\ast }=(m+\frac{1}{2})\pi$. The principal polarization peaks are therefore interleaved with the principal temperature peaks. Projection, baryon loading, time-varying potentials, and the temperature Doppler contribution shift the observed angular peaks from this idealized phase relation.