Signatures of Cosmic Structure Formation in the Microwave Background ...

On small scales the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is perturbed by large scale structure in the universe, primarily through Compton scattering and gravitational lensing. The current generation of CMB experiments is measuring these signals, allowing new measurements of the build-up of cosmic struc...

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Bibliographic Details
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Perimeter Institute 2011
Subjects:
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.48660/11030069
https://pirsa.org/11030069
Description
Summary:On small scales the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is perturbed by large scale structure in the universe, primarily through Compton scattering and gravitational lensing. The current generation of CMB experiments is measuring these signals, allowing new measurements of the build-up of cosmic structure. I will discuss two such measurements being made with the South Pole Telescope: 1) through Compton scattering (the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect) we have compiled a large catalog of very massive galaxy clusters extending to z>1, allowing a measure of the growth of structure from z=1 to today; 2) we are currently measuring the gravitational lensing of the CMB, providing an accurate measure of the integrated structure between z=0 and z=1100. Both of these are powerful new tests of our cosmological understanding. ...