The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Reionization kSZ trispectrum methodology and limits

Niall MacCrann, Frank J. Qu, Toshiya Namikawa, Boris Bolliet, Hongbo Cai, Erminia Calabrese, Steve K. Choi, William Coulton, Omar Darwish, Simone Ferraro, Yilun Guan, J. Colin Hill, Matt Hilton, Renée Hlozek, Darby Kramer, Mathew S. Madhavacheril, Kavilan Moodley, Neelima Sehgal, Blake D. Sherwin, Cristóbal SifónSuzanne T. Staggs, Hy Trac, Alexander Van Engelen, Eve M. Vavagiakis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Patchy reionization generates kinematic Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (kSZ) anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Large-scale velocity perturbations along the line of sight modulate the small-scale kSZ power spectrum, leading to a trispectrum (or four-point function) in the CMB that depends on the physics of reionization. We investigate the challenges in detecting this trispectrum and use tools developed for CMB lensing, such as realization-dependent bias subtraction and cross-correlation based estimators, to counter uncertainties in the instrumental noise and assumed CMB power spectrum. We also find that both lensing and extragalactic foregrounds can impart larger trispectrum contributions than the reionization kSZ signal. We present a range of mitigation methods for both of these sources of contamination, validated on microwave-sky simulations. We use ACT DR6 and Planck data to calculate an upper limit on the reionization kSZ trispectrum from a measurement dominated by foregrounds. The upper limit is about 50 times the signal predicted from recent simulations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)4247-4260
Number of pages14
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume532
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1 2024

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

Keywords

  • cosmic background radiation
  • cosmology: observations
  • dark ages, reionization, first stars
  • large-scale structure of Universe

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