Detection of the kinematic Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect with DES Year 1 and SPT

• Published in: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Main Authors: Soergel, B., Flender, S., Story, K. T., Bleem, L., Giannantonio, T., Efstathiou, G., Rykoff, E., Benson, B. A., Crawford, T., Dodelson, S., Habib, S., Heitmann, K., Holder, G., Jain, B., Rozo, E., Saro, A., Weller, J., Abdalla, F. B., Allam, S., Annis, J., Armstrong, R., Benoit-Lévy, A., Bernstein, G. M., Carlstrom, J. E., Carnero Rosell, A., Carrasco Kind, M., Castander, F. J., Chiu, I., Chown, R., Crocce, M., Cunha, C. E., D'Andrea, C. B., da Costa, L. N., de Haan, T., Desai, S., Diehl, H. T., Dietrich, J. P., Doel, P., Estrada, J., Evrard, A. E., Flaugher, B., Fosalba, P., Frieman, J., Gaztanaga, E., Gruen, D., Gruendl, R. A., Holzapfel, W. L., Honscheid, K., James, D. J., Keisler, R., Kuehn, K., Kuropatkin, N., Lahav, O., Lima, M., Marshall, J. L., McDonald, M., Melchior, P., Miller, C. J., Miquel, R., Nord, B., Ogando, R., Omori, Y., Plazas, A. A., Rapetti, D., Reichardt, C. L., Romer, A. K., Roodman, A., Saliwanchik, B. R., Sanchez, E., Schubnell, M., Sevilla-Noarbe, I., Sheldon, E., Smith, R. C., Soares-Santos, M., Sobreira, F., Stark, A., Suchyta, E., Swanson, M. E. C., Tarle, G., Thomas, D., Vieira, J. D., Walker, A. R., Whitehorn, N.
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: http://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1253590; https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1253590; https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stw1455

Here, we detect the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect with a statistical significance of $4.2 \sigma$ by combining a cluster catalogue derived from the first year data of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) with CMB temperature maps from the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) Survey. This measurement is performed with a differential statistic that isolates the pairwise kSZ signal, providing the first detection of the large-scale, pairwise motion of clusters using redshifts derived from photometric data. By fitting the pairwise kSZ signal to a theoretical template we measure the average central optical depth of the cluster sample, $\bar{\tau}_e = (3.75 \pm 0.89)\cdot 10^{-3}$. We compare the extracted signal to realistic simulations and find good agreement with respect to the signal-to-noise, the constraint on $\bar{\tau}_e$, and the corresponding gas fraction. High-precision measurements of the pairwise kSZ signal with future data will be able to place constraints on the baryonic physics of galaxy clusters, and could be used to probe gravity on scales $ \gtrsim 100$ Mpc.