Speaker
Description
The thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects (tSZ and kSZ, respectively) are the secondary anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Even though these effects are difficult to distinguish in CMB observations, they have been detected by Planck and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT).
tSZ and kSZ carry extensive information about the underlying cosmology and structure evolution, such as baryonic feedback processes and halo density and pressure profiles of ionized gas. However, their interpretation relies on uncertain astrophysical modelling, which directly affects the distribution of hot electrons in the Universe. Numerical simulations play an important role in modelling and interpreting the kSZ and tSZ maps.
In this work, the N-body HalfDome simulations have been used, together with Battaglia model for the tSZ and kSZ. The tSZ and kSZ maps have been painted over the HalfDome simulations, getting consistent agreement of power spectra between other simulations, such as Websky, and CMB missions such as Planck and ACT. Furthermore, the free parameters of the gas profiles were varied to investigate their impact on feedback processes and on the distribution of baryons within and beyond dark matter halos.
This work is a step towards a successful joint analysis between the large-scale structure observation surveys, such as Euclid, and CMB missions, such as Planck and ACT. tSZ and kSZ cross-analysis with galaxy clustering or lensing will be an essential tool to understand the evolution of our Universe, which is why an accurate modelling of these effects is needed. The modelling improvements presented here contribute to enabling such joint analyses.