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Jun 23 – 27, 2025
Eckhardt Research Center
America/Chicago timezone

A New Estimator for Constraining Reionization Using the CMB

Jun 23, 2025, 5:30 PM
2h
161 (Eckhardt Research Center)

161

Eckhardt Research Center

5640 South Ellis Ave, Chicago, IL 60637

Speaker

Darby Kramer (Arizona State University)

Description

The kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (kSZ) and patchy screening effect are two complementary cosmic microwave background (CMB) probes of the reionization era. The kSZ effect is a relatively strong signal, but is difficult to disentangle from other sources of temperature anisotropy, whereas patchy screening is weaker but can be reconstructed using the cleaner polarization channel. Here, we explore the potential of using upcoming CMB surveys to correlate a reconstructed map of patchy screening with (the square of) the kSZ map, and what a detection of this cross-correlation would mean for reionization science. To do this, we use simulations and theory to quantify the contributions to this signal from different redshifts. We then use the expected survey properties for CMB-S4 and CMB-HD to make detection forecasts. We find that, for or our fiducial reionization scenario, CMB-S4 will obtain a hint of this signal at up to 1.8σ, and CMB-HD will detect it at up to 14σ. We explore the physical interpretation of the signal and find that it is uniquely sensitive to the first half of reionization and to the bispectrum of the ionized gas distribution.

Would you be interested in presenting a poster if the conference is oversubcribed? Yes

Primary author

Darby Kramer (Arizona State University)

Co-authors

Alex Van Engelen (Arizona State University) Christopher Cain (Arizona State University) Evan Scannapieco (Arizona State University) Hy Trac (Carnegie Mellon University) Niall MacCrann (University of Cambridge) Skylar Grayson (Arizona State University) Blake Sherwin (University of Cambridge)

Presentation materials

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