A measurement of the mean central optical depth of galaxy clusters via the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with SPT-3G and DES

• Published in: Physical Review D
• Main Authors: Schiappucci, E., Bianchini, F., Aguena, M., Archipley, M., Balkenhol, L., Bleem, L.E., Chaubal, P., Crawford, T.M., Grandis, S., Omori, Y., Reichardt, C.L., Rozo, E., Rykoff, E.S., To, C., Abbott, T.M.C., Ade, P.A.R., Alves, O., Anderson, A.J., Andrade-Oliveira, F., Annis, J., Avva, J.S., Bacon, D., Benabed, K., Bender, A.N., Benson, B.A., Bernstein, G.M., Bertin, E., Bocquet, S., Bouchet, F.R., Brooks, D., Burke, D.L., Carlstrom, J.E., Carnero Rosell, A., Carrasco Kind, M., Carretero, J., Cecil, T.W., Chang, C.L., Chichura, P.M., Chou, T.-L., Costanzi, M., Cukierman, A., da Costa, L.N., Daley, C., de Haan, T., Desai, S., Dibert, K.R., Diehl, H.T., Dobbs, M.A., Doel, P., Doux, C., Dutcher, D., Everett, S., Everett, W., Feng, C., Ferguson, K.R., Ferrero, I., Ferté, A., Flaugher, B., Foster, A., Frieman, J., Galli, S., Gambrel, A.E., García-Bellido, J., Gardner, R.W., Gatti, M., Giannantonio, T., Goeckner-Wald, N., Gruen, D., Gualtieri, R., Guns, S., Gutierrez, G., Halverson, N.W., Hinton, S.R., Hivon, E., Holder, G.P., Hollowood, D.L., Holzapfel, W.L., Honscheid, K., Hood, J.C., Huang, N., James, D.J., Knox, L., Korman, M., Kuehn, K., Kuo, C.-L., Lahav, O., Lee, A.T., Lidman, C., Lima, M., Lowitz, A.E., Lu, C., March, M., Mena-Fernández, J., Menanteau, F., Millea, M., Miquel, R., Mohr, J.J., Montgomery, J., Muir, J., Natoli, T., Noble, G.I., Novosad, V., Ogando, R.L.C., Padin, S., Pan, Z., Paz-Chinchón, F., Pereira, M.E.S., Pieres, A., Plazas Malagón, A.A., Prabhu, K., Prat, J., Quan, W., Rahlin, A., Raveri, M., Rodriguez-Monroy, M., Romer, A.K., Rouble, M., Ruhl, J.E., Sanchez, E., Scarpine, V., Schubnell, M., Smecher, G., Smith, M., Soares-Santos, M., Sobrin, J.A., Suchyta, E., Suzuki, A., Tarle, G., Thomas, D., Thompson, K.L., Thorne, B., Tucker, C., Umilta, C., Vieira, J.D., Vincenzi, M., Wang, G., Weaverdyck, N., Weller, J., Whitehorn, N., Wu, W.L.K., Yefremenko, V., Young, M.R.
• Other Authors: Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Sorbonne Université (SU)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), SPT-3G, DES
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2023
• Subjects: [PHYS.ASTR]Physics [physics]/Astrophysics [astro-ph]; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-03759916; https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.042004

International audience We infer the mean optical depth of a sample of optically-selected galaxy clusters from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) via the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect. The pairwise kSZ signal between pairs of clusters drawn from the DES Year-3 cluster catalog is detected at $4.1 \sigma$ in cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps from two years of observations with the SPT-3G camera on the South Pole Telescope. After cuts, there are 24,580 clusters in the $\sim 1,400$ deg$^2$ of the southern sky observed by both experiments. We infer the mean optical depth of the cluster sample with two techniques. The optical depth inferred from the pairwise kSZ signal is $\bar{\tau}_e = (2.97 \pm 0.73) \times 10^{-3}$, while that inferred from the thermal SZ signal is $\bar{\tau}_e = (2.51 \pm 0.55) \times 10^{-3}$. The two measures agree at $0.6 \sigma$. We perform a suite of systematic checks to test the robustness of the analysis.