Boltzmann hierarchy for the cosmic microwave background at second order including photon polarization

Non-Gaussianity and B-mode polarization are particularly interesting features of the cosmic microwave background, as-at least in the standard model of cosmology-their only sources to first order in cosmological perturbation theory are primordial, possibly generated during inflation. If the primordial sources are small, the question arises how large is the non-Gaussianity and B-mode background induced in second order from the initially Gaussian and scalar perturbations. In this paper we derive the Boltzmann hierarchy for the microwave background photon phase-space distributions at second order in cosmological perturbation theory including the complete polarization information, providing the basis for further numerical studies. As an aside we note that the second-order collision term contains new sources of B-mode polarization and that no polarization persists in the tight-coupling limit.