An Improved Measurement of the Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies from the SPT-SZ + SPTpol Surveys

• Published in: The Astrophysical Journal
• Main Authors: Reichardt, C. L., Patil, S., Ade, P. A. R., Anderson, A. J., Austermann, J. E., Avva, J. S., Baxter, E., Beall, J. A., Bender, A. N., Benson, B. A., Bianchini, F., Bleem, L. E., Carlstrom, J. E., Chang, C. L., Chaubal, P., Chiang, H. C., Chou, T. L., Citron, R., Moran, C. Corbett, Crawford, T. M., Crites, A. T., de Haan, T., Dobbs, M. A., Everett, W., Gallicchio, J., George, E. M., Gilbert, A., Gupta, N., Halverson, N. W., Harrington, N., Henning, J. W., Hilton, G., Holder, G. P., Holzapfel, W. L., Hrubes, J. D., Huang, N., Hubmayr, J., Irwin, K. D., Knox, L., Lee, A. T., Li, D., Lowitz, A., Luong-Van, D., McMahon, J. J., Mehl, J., Meyer, S. S., Millea, M., Mocanu, L. M., Mohr, J. J., Montgomery, J., Nadolski, A., Natoli, T., Nibarger, J. P., Noble, G., Novosad, V., Omori, Y., Padin, S., Pryke, C., Ruhl, J. E., Saliwanchik, B. R., Sayre, J. T., Schaffer, K. K., Shirokoff, E., Sievers, C., Smecher, G., Spieler, H. G., Staniszewski, Z., Stark, A. A., Tucker, C., Vanderlinde, K., Veach, T., Vieira, J. D., Wang, G., Whitehorn, N., Williamson, R., Wu, W. L. K., Yefremenko, V.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: American Astronomical Society 2021
• Subjects: Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect; Cosmic microwave background radiation; Reionization; South pole
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abd407

We report new measurements of millimeter-wave power spectra in the angular multipole range 2000 ≤ ℓ ≤ 11,000 (angular scales 5′ ≳ θ ≳ 1′). By adding 95 and 150 GHz data from the low-noise 500 deg² SPTpol survey to the SPT-SZ three-frequency 2540 deg² survey, we substantially reduce the uncertainties in these bands. These power spectra include contributions from the primary cosmic microwave background, cosmic infrared background, radio galaxies, and thermal and kinematic Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) effects. The data favor a thermal SZ (tSZ) power at 143 GHz of D^(tSZ)₃₀₀₀ = 3.42±0.54 μK² and a kinematic SZ (kSZ) power of D^(kSZ)₃₀₀₀ = 3.0 ± 1.0 μK². This is the first measurement of kSZ power at ≥3σ. However, different assumptions about the CIB or SZ models can reduce the significance down to 2.4σ in the worst case. We study the implications of the measured kSZ power for the epoch of reionization under the Calabrese et al. model for the kSZ power spectrum and find the duration of reionization to be Δz_(re) = 1.1^(+1.6)_(−0.7) (Δz_(re) < 4.1 at 95% confidence), when combined with our previously published tSZ bispectrum measurement. The upper limit tightens to Δz_(re) < 3.2 if the assumed homogeneous kSZ power is increased by 25% (~0.5 μK²) and relaxes to Δz_(re) < 5.2 if the homogeneous kSZ power is decreased by the same amount. © 2021 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2020 February 13; revised 2020 November 6; accepted 2020 December 14; published 2021 February 24. The South Pole Telescope program is supported by the National Science Foundation through grants PLR-1248097 and OPP-1852617. Partial support is also provided by the NSF Physics Frontier Center grant PHY-0114422 to the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Kavli Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through grant GBMF#947 to the University of Chicago. This work is also supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. S.P. acknowledges ...