Skip to main content
OSTI.GOVU.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
 

Mitigating the optical depth degeneracy using the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect with CMB-S4 data

Journal Article · · Physical Review D
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [4]
  1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  3. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States); Flatiron Inst., New York, NY (United States)
  4. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The epoch of reionization is one of the major phase transitions in the history of the universe, and is a focus of ongoing and upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments with improved sensitivity to small-scale fluctuations. Reionization also represents a significant contaminant to CMB-derived cosmological parameter constraints, due to the degeneracy between the Thomson-scattering optical depth, $$\tau$$, and the amplitude of scalar perturbations, $$A_s$$. This degeneracy subsequently hinders the ability of large-scale structure data to constrain the sum of the neutrino masses, a major target for cosmology in the 2020s. In this work, we explore the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect as a probe of reionization, and show that it can be used to mitigate the optical depth degeneracy with high-sensitivity, high-resolution data from the upcoming CMB-S4 experiment. We discuss the dependence of the kSZ power spectrum on physical reionization model parameters, as well as on empirical reionization parameters, namely $$\tau$$ and the duration of reionization, $$\Delta z$$. We show that by combining the kSZ two-point function and the reconstructed kSZ four-point function, degeneracies between $$\tau$$ and $$\Delta z$$ can be strongly broken, yielding tight constraints on both parameters. We forecast $$\sigma(\tau) = 0.003$$ and $$\sigma(\Delta z) = 0.25$$ for a combination of CMB-S4 and Planck data, including detailed treatment of foregrounds and atmospheric noise. The constraint on $$\tau$$ is nearly identical to the cosmic-variance limit that can be achieved from large-angle CMB polarization data. The kSZ effect thus promises to yield not only detailed information about the reionization epoch, but also to enable high-precision cosmological constraints on the neutrino mass.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); Simons Foundation; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1771973
Journal Information:
Physical Review D, Journal Name: Physical Review D Journal Issue: 6 Vol. 103; ISSN 2470-0010
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (41)

Small-scale fluctuations of relic radiation journal April 1970
SARAS 2: a spectral radiometer for probing cosmic dawn and the epoch of reionization through detection of the global 21-cm signal journal April 2018
Advanced ACTPol Cryogenic Detector Arrays and Readout journal March 2016
How JWST can measure first light, reionization and galaxy assembly journal March 2006
Planck 2015 results : VI. LFI mapmaking journal September 2016
Planck 2015 results : VIII. High Frequency Instrument data processing: Calibration and maps journal September 2016
Planck 2018 results: VI. Cosmological parameters journal September 2020
Reionization optical depth determination from Planck HFI data with ten percent accuracy journal March 2020
Minimal anisotropy of the microwave background radiation in the gravitational instability picture journal July 1984
Generation of microwave background fluctuations from nonlinear perturbations at the ERA of galaxy formation journal July 1986
Reionization Revisited: Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies and Polarization journal January 2000
Small‐Scale Cosmic Microwave Background Temperature and Polarization Anisotropies Due to Patchy Reionization journal December 2003
On Foreground Removal from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Data by an Internal Linear Combination Method: Limitations and Implications journal September 2004
The Effect of Absorption Systems on Cosmic Reionization journal February 2012
A Measurement of Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies with two Years of South pole Telescope Observations journal July 2012
Deconstructing the Kinetic sz Power Spectrum journal August 2012
Cosmic Microwave Background Constraints on the Duration and Timing of Reionization from the South pole Telescope journal August 2012
Reionization on Large Scales. iii. Predictions for Low-ℓ Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization and High-ℓ Kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'Dovich Observables journal October 2013
A Measurement of Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies from the 2500 Square-Degree Spt-Sz Survey journal January 2015
The Simons Observatory: science goals and forecasts journal February 2019
Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) journal March 2017
Constraints on neutrino mass from cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure journal October 2015
Design and characterization of the Large-aperture Experiment to Detect the Dark Age (LEDA) radiometer systems journal May 2018
The Hyper Suprime-Cam SSP Survey: Overview and survey design journal September 2017
Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Component-separated maps of CMB temperature and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect journal July 2020
Polarization of the microwave background in reionized models journal February 1997
Model-independent reionization observables in the CMB journal July 2003
Signature of patchy reionization in the polarization anisotropy of the CMB journal August 2007
Reconstructing patchy reionization from the cosmic microwave background journal February 2009
Towards a cosmological neutrino mass detection journal December 2015
Eliminating the optical depth nuisance from the CMB with 21 cm cosmology journal February 2016
Weak lensing of intensity mapping: The cosmic infrared background journal June 2018
Characterizing the epoch of reionization with the small-scale CMB: Constraints on the optical depth and duration journal December 2018
Detecting Patchy Reionization in the Cosmic Microwave Background journal July 2017
CMB and SZ effect separation with constrained Internal Linear Combinations: CMB and SZ separation with constrained ILC journal November 2010
Microwave Background Radiation as a Probe of the Contemporary Structure and History of the Universe journal September 1980
The Kinetic Sunyaev–Zel’Dovich Effect from Reionization: Simulated Full-Sky maps at Arcminute Resolution journal June 2016
The Impact of Baryonic Physics on the Kinetic Sunyaev–Zel’dovich Effect journal January 2018
A Projected Estimate of the Reionization Optical Depth Using the CLASS Experiment’s Sample Variance Limited E-mode Measurement journal August 2018
Results from EDGES High-Band. III. New Constraints on Parameters of the Early Universe journal April 2019
The 21 cm kSZ–kSZ Bispectrum during the Epoch of Reionization journal August 2020

Similar Records

COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND CONSTRAINTS ON THE DURATION AND TIMING OF REIONIZATION FROM THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE
Journal Article · Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · Astrophysical Journal · OSTI ID:22092452
Constraining cosmological parameters using the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect with CMB-S4 and future galaxy cluster surveys
Journal Article · Fri Mar 21 00:00:00 EDT 2025 · Physical Review. D. · OSTI ID:2575474

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS