TY - JOUR
T1 - Probing the Circumgalactic Medium with Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Statistical Anisotropy
AU - Roy, Anirban
AU - van Engelen, Alexander
AU - Gluscevic, Vera
AU - Battaglia, Nicholas
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Stefania Amodeo, Joel Meyers, Connor Sheere, Kendrick Smith, and David Spergel. V.G. is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. PHY-2013951. N.B. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1910021 and NASA grants 21-ADAP21-0114 and 21-ATP21-0129.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/7/1
Y1 - 2023/7/1
N2 - As cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons traverse the universe, anisotropies can be induced via Thomson scattering (proportional to the electron density; optical depth) and inverse Compton scattering (proportional to the electron pressure; thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect). Measurements of anisotropy in optical depth τ and Compton y parameters are imprinted by the galaxies and galaxy clusters and are thus sensitive to the thermodynamic properties of the circumgalactic medium and intergalactic medium. We use an analytic halo model to predict the power spectrum of the optical depth (τ τ), the cross-correlation between the optical depth and the Compton y parameter (τ y), and the cross-correlation between the optical depth and galaxy clustering (τ g), and compare this model to cosmological simulations. We constrain the optical depths of halos at z ≲ 3 using a technique originally devised to constrain patchy reionization at a higher redshift range. The forecasted signal-to-noise ratio is 2.6, 8.5, and 13, respectively, for a CMB-S4-like experiment and a Vera C. Rubin Observatory-like optical survey. We show that a joint analysis of these probes can constrain the amplitude of the density profiles of halos to 6.5% and the pressure profiles to 13%. These constraints translate to astrophysical parameters, such as the gas mass fraction, f g, which can be constrained to 5.3% uncertainty at z ∼ 0. The cross-correlations presented here are complementary to other CMB and galaxy cross-correlations since they do not require spectroscopic galaxy redshifts and are another example of how such correlations are a powerful probe of the astrophysics of galaxy evolution.
AB - As cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons traverse the universe, anisotropies can be induced via Thomson scattering (proportional to the electron density; optical depth) and inverse Compton scattering (proportional to the electron pressure; thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect). Measurements of anisotropy in optical depth τ and Compton y parameters are imprinted by the galaxies and galaxy clusters and are thus sensitive to the thermodynamic properties of the circumgalactic medium and intergalactic medium. We use an analytic halo model to predict the power spectrum of the optical depth (τ τ), the cross-correlation between the optical depth and the Compton y parameter (τ y), and the cross-correlation between the optical depth and galaxy clustering (τ g), and compare this model to cosmological simulations. We constrain the optical depths of halos at z ≲ 3 using a technique originally devised to constrain patchy reionization at a higher redshift range. The forecasted signal-to-noise ratio is 2.6, 8.5, and 13, respectively, for a CMB-S4-like experiment and a Vera C. Rubin Observatory-like optical survey. We show that a joint analysis of these probes can constrain the amplitude of the density profiles of halos to 6.5% and the pressure profiles to 13%. These constraints translate to astrophysical parameters, such as the gas mass fraction, f g, which can be constrained to 5.3% uncertainty at z ∼ 0. The cross-correlations presented here are complementary to other CMB and galaxy cross-correlations since they do not require spectroscopic galaxy redshifts and are another example of how such correlations are a powerful probe of the astrophysics of galaxy evolution.
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/acd194
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/acd194
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85164363034
SN - 0004-637X
VL - 951
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 50
ER -