Probing the Circumgalactic Medium with Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Statistical Anisotropy

The intergalactic neutral hydrogen, which is responsible for the Ly alpha forest of quasar absorption lines, is a tracer of much larger amounts of ionized hydrogen. The ionized component has yet to be detected directly, but is expected to scatter cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. We use hydrodynamic simulations of a Lambda cold dark matter (CDM) universe to create mock quasar spectra and CMB sky maps from the same volume of space. We find that the high-redshift Ly alpha forest gas causes temperature fluctuations of the order of 1 mu K rms in the CMB on arcmin scales. The kinetic and thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects have a similar magnitude at redshift 3, with the thermal effect becoming relatively weaker as expected at higher redshift. The CMB signal associated with lines of sight having H I column densities > 10(18) cm(-2) is only marginally stronger than that for lower column density sightlines. There is a much more significant dependence of rms temperature fluctuation on mean Ly alpha absorbed flux, however, suggesting that the CMB signal effectively arises in lower density material. We investigate the extent to which it is possible to cross-correlate information from the Ly alpha forest and the microwave background to detect the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect at redshifts 2-4. In so doing, we are able to set direct limits on the density of diffuse ionized intergalactic baryons. We carry out a preliminary comparison at a mean redshift z = 3 of 3488 quasar spectra from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 3 and the WMAP first year data. Assuming that the baryons are clustered as in a Lambda CDM cosmology, and have the same mean temperature, the cross-correlation yields a weak limit on the cosmic density of ionized baryons Omega(b,I). As a fraction of the critical density, we find Omega(b,I) < 0.8 at 95 per cent confidence. With data from upcoming CMB telescopes, we anticipate that a direct detection of the high-redshift ionized intergalactic medium will soon be possible, providing an important consistency check on cosmological models.

The thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect is produced by the interaction of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons with the hot (a few keV) and diffuse gas of electrons inside galaxy clusters integrated along the line of sight. This effect produces a distortion of CMB blackbody emission law. This distortion law depends on the electronic temperature of the intra-cluster hot gas, $T_{e}$, through the so-called tSZ relativistic corrections. In this work, we have performed a statistical analysis of the tSZ spectral distortion on large galaxy cluster samples. We performed a stacking analysis for several electronic temperature bins, using both spectroscopic measurements of X-ray temperatures and a scaling relation between X-ray luminosities and electronic temperatures. We report the first high significance detection of the relativistic tSZ at a significance of 5.3 $\sigma$. We also demonstrate that the observed tSZ relativistic corrections are consistent with X-ray deduced temperatures. This measurement of the tSZ spectral law demonstrates that tSZ effect spectral distorsion can be used as a probe to measure galaxy cluster temperatures.

The Rayleigh scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons off the neutral hydrogen produced during recombination effectively creates an additional scattering surface after recombination that encodes new cosmological information, including the expansion and ionization history of the universe. A first detection of Rayleigh scattering is a tantalizing target for next-generation CMB experiments. We have developed a Rayleigh scattering forecasting pipeline that includes instrumental effects, atmospheric noise, and astrophysical foregrounds (e.g., Galactic dust, cosmic infrared background, or CIB, and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect). We forecast the Rayleigh scattering detection significance for several upcoming ground-based experiments, including $\mathrm{SPT}\text{\ensuremath{-}}3\mathrm{G}+$, Simons Observatory, CCAT-prime, and CMB-S4, and examine the limitations from atmospheric and astrophysical foregrounds as well as potential mitigation strategies. When combined with Planck data, we estimate that the ground-based experiments will detect Rayleigh scattering with a significance between 1.6 and 3.7, primarily limited by atmospheric noise and the CIB.

We show how the correlation between the thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect (tSZ) from galaxy clusters and dust emission from cosmic infrared background (CIB) sources can be calculated in a halo model framework. Using recent tSZ and CIB models, we find that the size of the tSZ x CIB cross-correlation is approximately 20 per cent at 150 GHz. The contribution to the total angular power spectrum is of order -2 \mu K^2 at ell=3000, however, this value is uncertain by a factor of two to three, primarily because of CIB source modelling uncertainties. We expect the large uncertainty in this component to degrade upper limits on the kinematic Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect (kSZ), due to similarity in the frequency dependence of the tSZ x CIB and kSZ across the frequency range probed by current Cosmic Microwave Background missions. We also find that the degree of tSZ x CIB correlation is higher for mm x sub-mm spectra than mm x mm, because more of the sub-mm CIB originates at lower redshifts (z<2), where most tSZ clusters are found.

We present first detailed maps of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect on a z=0.89 cluster with the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA). The high sensitivity of these observations enabled the effective identification and removal of the millimetre-wave sources contaminating the tSZ signal, thus isolating the influence of the hot electron gas of the cluster on the cosmic microwave background radiation from other emissions. The tSZ observed with success by NOEMA was modelled together with previous single-dish observations (IRAM 30-metre, Green Bank Telescope, and Caltech Sub-millimeter Observatory) to obtain the first core-to-outskirts (from ∼ 15 to ∼ 1500 kpc) pressure profile reconstruction on such a high-redshift galaxy cluster. NOEMA observations with a high angular resolution have shown that the pressure profile is flat in the core of the cluster. These observations confirm the disturbed nature of ļj and map for the first time the distribution of its thermal gas at arcsecond scales in the environments of the central cluster galaxy. Our results showcase the excellent capabilities of NOEMA to complement and enhance the data provided by other millimetre-wave instruments in resolving the core of high-redshift clusters via tSZ emission.

The cosmic web contains filamentary structure on a wide range of scales. On the largest scales, superclustering aligns multiple galaxy clusters along intercluster bridges, visible through their thermal Sunyaev–Zel’dovich signal in the cosmic microwave background. We demonstrate a new, flexible method to analyze the hot gas signal from multiscale extended structures. We use a Compton y-map from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) stacked on redMaPPer cluster positions from the optical Dark Energy Survey (DES). Cutout images from the y-map are oriented with large-scale structure information from DES galaxy data such that the superclustering signal is aligned before being overlaid. We find evidence of an extended quadrupole moment of the stacked y signal at the 3.5σ level, demonstrating that the large-scale thermal energy surrounding galaxy clusters is anisotropically distributed. We compare our ACT × DES results with the Buzzard simulations, finding broad agreement. Using simulations, we highlight the promise of this novel technique for constraining the evolution of anisotropic, non-Gaussian structure using future combinations of microwave and optical surveys.

Simulated observations of a $10\dg \times 10\dg$ field by the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) are analysed in order to separate cosmic microwave background (CMB) emission from foreground contaminants and instrumental noise and thereby determine how accurately the CMB emission can be recovered. The simulations include emission from the CMB, the kinetic and thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effects from galaxy clusters, as well as Galactic dust, free-free and synchrotron. We find that, even in the presence of these contaminating foregrounds, the CMB map is reconstructed with an rms accuracy of about 20 $\mu$K per 12.6 arcmin pixel, which represents a substantial improvement as compared to the individual temperature sensitivities of the raw data channels. We also find, for the single $10\dg \times 10\dg$ field, that the CMB power spectrum is accurately recovered for $\ell \la 600$.

Recent Chandra observations have revealed the presence of cold fronts in many clusters of galaxies. The cold fronts are believed to be produced by the bulk motions of massive, dense, cold gas clouds with respect to the hotter, more rarefied ambient gas at velocities that can be as high as the speed of sound. This phenomenon may produce a significant contamination of both the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect and the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization pattern observed in the direction of a cluster. We estimate the contributions to the kinetic SZ effect and to the CMB polarization toward galaxy clusters produced by the bulk motions of the gas in the inner parts of galaxy clusters. The observed cold fronts probe the absolute velocities of the gas motion, while the induced polarization and the kinetic SZ effect probe the transverse and the radial components, respectively. We show that these signals may be easily detected with sensitive future experiments, opening an exciting new window for studies of galaxy cluster internal dynamics and eventually facilitating reconstruction of the intrinsic cluster polarization of the CMB and the associated measure of the local CMB quadrupole.

We present a study of the spatial and redshift distributions of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) galaxies toward the position of CrB-H, a very deep and extended decrement in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), located within the Corona Borealis supercluster (CrB-SC). It was found in a survey with the Very Small Array (VSA) interferometer at 33 GHz, with a peak negative brightness temperature of -230 muK, and deviates 4.4-sigma from the Gaussian CMB (G\'enova-Santos et al.). Observations with the Millimeter and Infrared Testa Grigia Observatory (MITO) suggested that 25$^+21_-18% of this decrement may be caused by the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect (Battistelli et al.). Here we investigate whether the galaxy distribution could be tracing either a previously unnoticed galaxy cluster or a Warm/Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM) filament that could build up this tSZ effect. We find that the projected density of galaxies outside Abell clusters and with redshifts 0.05<z<0.12 at the position of CrB-H is the highest in the area encompassed by the CrB-SC. Most of these galaxies are located around redshifts z=0.07 and z=0.11, but no clear connection in the form of a filamentary structure is appreciable in between. While the galaxy distribution at z=0.07 is sparse, we find evidence at z=0.11 of a galaxy group or a low-mass galaxy cluster. We estimate that this structure could produce a tSZ effect of ~ -18 muK. The remaining VSA signal of ~ -212 muK is still a significant 4.1-sigma deviation from the Gaussian CMB. However, the MITO error bar allows for a larger tSZ effect, which could be produced by galaxy clusters or superclusters beyond the sensitivity of the SDSS. Contributions from other possible secondary anisotropies associated with these structures are also discussed.

We present measurements of the average thermal Sunyaev Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect from optically selected galaxy groups and clusters at high signal-to-noise (up to 12σ) and estimate their baryon content within a 2.1′ radius aperture. Sources from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR15 catalog overlap with 3,700 sq deg of sky observed by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) from 2008 to 2018 at 150 and 98 GHz (ACT DR5), and 2,089 sq deg of internal linear combination component-separated maps combining ACT and Planck data (ACT DR4). The corresponding optical depths τ¯, which depend on the baryon content of the halos, are estimated using results from cosmological hydrodynamic simulations assuming an active galactic nuclei feedback radiative cooling model. We estimate the mean mass of the halos in multiple luminosity bins, and compare the tSZ-based τ¯ estimates to theoretical predictions of the baryon content for a Navarro-Frenk-White profile. We do the same for τ¯ estimates extracted from fits to pairwise baryon momentum measurements of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (kSZ) for the same dataset obtained in a companion paper. We find that the τ¯ estimates from the tSZ measurements in this work and the kSZ measurements in the companion paper agree within 1σ for two out of the three disjoint luminosity bins studied, while they differ by 2–3σ in the highest luminosity bin. The optical depth estimates account for one-third to all of the theoretically predicted baryon content in the halos across luminosity bins. Potential systematic uncertainties are discussed. The tSZ and kSZ measurements provide a step toward empirical Compton-y¯−τ¯ relationships to provide new tests of cluster formation and evolution models.2 MoreReceived 4 February 2021Accepted 27 May 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.104.043503© 2021 American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasCosmic microwave backgroundCosmological parametersCosmologyLarge scale structure of the UniverseGravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

We compute the spectral distortions of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization induced by non-linear effects in the Compton interactions between CMB photons and the flow of intergalactic electrons. This signal is of the y-type and is dominated by contributions arising from the reionized era. We stress that it is not shadowed by the thermal SZ effect which has no equivalent for polarization. We decompose its angular dependence into E- and B-modes, and we calculate the corresponding power spectra, both exactly and using a suitable Limber approximation that allows a simpler numerical evaluation. We find that B-modes are of the same order of magnitude as E-modes. Both spectra are relatively flat, peaking around ℓ = 280, and their overall amplitude is directly related to the optical depth to reionization. Moreover, we find this effect to be one order of magnitude larger than the non-linear kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in galaxy clusters. Finally, we discuss how to improve the detectability of our signal by cross-correlating it with other quantities sourced by the flow of intergalactic electrons.

We present constraints on the f(R) gravity model using a sample of 1005 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.25–1.78 that have been selected through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect from South Pole Telescope data and subjected to optical and near-infrared confirmation with the multicomponent matched filter algorithm. We employ weak gravitational lensing mass calibration from the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 data for 688 clusters at z&lt;0.95 and from the Hubble Space Telescope for 39 clusters with 0.6&lt;z&lt;1.7. Our cluster sample is a powerful probe of f(R) gravity, because this model predicts a scale-dependent enhancement in the growth of structure, which impacts the halo mass function (HMF) at cluster mass scales. To account for these modified gravity effects on the HMF, our analysis employs a semianalytical approach calibrated with numerical simulations. Combining calibrated cluster counts with primary cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization anisotropy measurements from the Planck 2018 release, we derive robust constraints on the f(R) parameter fR0. Our results, log10|fR0|&lt;−5.32 at the 95% credible level, are the tightest current constraints on f(R) gravity from cosmological scales. This upper limit rules out f(R)-like deviations from general relativity that result in more than a ∼20% enhancement of the cluster population on mass scales M200c&gt;3×1014M⊙.

We point out that a modified temperature–redshift relation (T-z relation) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) cannot be deduced by any observational method that appeals to an a priori thermalisation to the CMB temperature T of the excited states in a probe environment of independently determined redshift z. For example, this applies to quasar-light absorption by a damped Lyman-alpha system due to atomic as well as ionic fine-splitting transitions or molecular rotational bands. Similarly, the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (thSZ) effect cannot be used to extract the CMB’s T-z relation. This is because the relative line strengths between ground and excited states in the former and the CMB spectral distortion in the latter case both depend, apart from environment-specific normalisations, solely on the dimensionless spectral variable x=hνkBT. Since the literature on extractions of the CMB’s T-z relation always assumes (i) ν(z)=(1+z)ν(z=0), where ν(z=0) is the observed frequency in the heliocentric rest frame, the finding (ii) T(z)=(1+z)T(z=0) just confirms the expected blackbody nature of the interacting CMB at z&gt;0. In contrast to the emission of isolated, directed radiation, whose frequency–redshift relation (ν-z relation) is subject to (i), a non-conventional ν-z relation ν(z)=f(z)ν(z=0) of pure, isotropic blackbody radiation, subject to adiabatically slow cosmic expansion, necessarily has to follow that of the T-z relation T(z)=f(z)T(z=0) and vice versa. In general, the function f(z) is determined by the energy conservation of the CMB fluid in a Friedmann–Lemaitre–Robertson–Walker universe. If the pure CMB is subject to an SU(2) rather than a U(1) gauge principle, then f(z)=1/41/3(1+z) for z≫1, and f(z) is non-linear for z∼1.

We present a study of the weak lensing inferred matter profiles ΔΣ(R) of 698 South Pole Telescope (SPT) thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (tSZE) selected and MCMF optically confirmed galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.25 &lt; z &lt; 0.94 that have associated weak gravitational lensing shear profiles from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). Rescaling these profiles to account for the mass dependent size and the redshift dependent density produces average rescaled matter profiles ΔΣ(R/R200c)/(ρcritR200c) with a lower dispersion than the unscaled ΔΣ(R) versions, indicating a significant degree of self-similarity. Galaxy clusters from hydrodynamical simulations also exhibit matter profiles that suggest a high degree of self-similarity, with RMS variation among the average rescaled matter profiles with redshift and mass falling by a factor of approximately six and 23, respectively, compared to the unscaled average matter profiles. We employed this regularity in a new Bayesian method for weak lensing mass calibration that employs the so-called cluster mass posterior P(M200|ζ̂, λ̂, z), which describes the individual cluster masses given their tSZE (ζ̂) and optical (λ̂, z) observables. This method enables simultaneous constraints on richness λ-mass and tSZE detection significance ζ-mass relations using average rescaled cluster matter profiles. We validated the method using realistic mock datasets and present observable-mass relation constraints for the SPT×DES sample, where we constrained the amplitude, mass trend, redshift trend, and intrinsic scatter. Our observable-mass relation results are in agreement with the mass calibration derived from the recent cosmological analysis of the SPT×DES data based on a cluster-by-cluster lensing calibration. Our new mass calibration technique offers a higher efficiency when compared to the single cluster calibration technique. We present new validation tests of the observable-mass relation that indicate the underlying power-law form and scatter are adequate to describe the real cluster sample but that also suggest a redshift variation in the intrinsic scatter of the λ-mass relation may offer a better description. In addition, the average rescaled matter profiles offer high signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) constraints on the shape of real cluster matter profiles, which are in good agreement with available hydrodynamical ΛCDM simulations. This high S/N profile contains information about baryon feedback, the collisional nature of dark matter, and potential deviations from general relativity.

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) energy spectrum is a near-perfect blackbody. The standard model of cosmology predicts small spectral distortions to this form, but no such distortion of the sky-averaged CMB spectrum has yet been measured. We calculate the largest expected distortion, which arises from the inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons off hot, free electrons, known as the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (TSZ) effect. We show that the predicted signal is roughly one order of magnitude below the current bound from the COBE-FIRAS experiment, but it can be detected at enormous significance (≳1000σ) by the proposed Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE). Although cosmic variance reduces the effective signal-to-noise ratio to 230σ, this measurement will still yield a subpercent constraint on the total thermal energy of electrons in the observable Universe. Furthermore, we show that PIXIE can detect subtle relativistic effects in the sky-averaged TSZ signal at 30σ, which directly probe moments of the optical depth-weighted intracluster medium electron temperature distribution. These effects break the degeneracy between the electron density and the temperature in the mean TSZ signal, allowing a direct inference of the mean baryon density at low redshift. Future spectral distortion probes will thus determine the global thermodynamic properties of ionized gas in the Universe with unprecedented precision. These measurements will impose a fundamental "integral constraint" on models of galaxy formation and the injection of feedback energy over cosmic time.