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arXiv · 2502.08850

Measurements of the Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect with ACT and DESI Luminous Red Galaxies

R. Henry Liu·Simone Ferraro·Emmanuel Schaan·Rongpu Zhou·Jessica Nicole Aguilar·Steven Ahlen·Nicholas Battaglia·Davide Bianchi·David Brooks·Todd Claybaugh·Shaun Cole·William R. Coulton·Axel de la Macorra·Arjun Dey·Kevin Fanning·Jaime E. Forero-Romero·Enrique Gaztañaga·Yulin Gong·Satya Gontcho A Gontcho·Daniel Gruen·Gaston Gutierrez·Boryana Hadzhiyska·Klaus Honscheid·Cullan Howlett·Robert Kehoe·Theodore Kisner·Anthony Kremin·Aleksandra Kusiak·Andrew Lambert·Martin Landriau·Laurent Le Guillou·Michael Levi·Martine Lokken·Marc Manera·Paul Martini·Aaron Meisner·Ramon Miquel·Kavilan Moodley·Jeffrey A. Newman·Gustavo Niz·Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille·Will Percival·Francisco Prada·Ignasi Pérez-Ràfols·Bernardita Ried Guachalla·Graziano Rossi·Eusebio Sanchez·David Schlegel·Michael Schubnell·Hee-Jong Seo·Cristóbal Sifón·David Sprayberry·Gregory Tarlé·Eve M. Vavagiakis·Benjamin Alan Weaver·Edward J. Wollack·Hu Zou
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Abstract

Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons scatter off the free-electron gas in galaxies and clusters, allowing us to use the CMB as a backlight to probe the gas in and around low-redshift galaxies. The thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, sourced by hot electrons in high-density environments, measures the thermal pressure of the target objects, shedding light on halo thermodynamics and galaxy formation and providing a path toward understanding the baryon distribution around cosmic structures. We use a combination of high-resolution CMB maps from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and photometric luminous red galaxy (LRG) catalogues from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to measure the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich signal in four redshift bins from $z=0.4$ to $z=1.2$, with a combined detection significance of 19$\sigma$ when stacking on the fiducial CMB Compton-$y$ map. We discuss possible sources of contamination, finding that residual dust emission associated with the target galaxies is important and limits current analyses. We discuss several mitigation strategies and quantify the residual modelling uncertainty. This work complements closely related measurements of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and weak lensing of the same galaxies.

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R. Henry Liu, Simone Ferraro, Emmanuel Schaan, Rongpu Zhou, Jessica Nicole Aguilar, Steven Ahlen, Nicholas Battaglia, Davide Bianchi, David Brooks, Todd Claybaugh, Shaun Cole, William R. Coulton, Axel de la Macorra, Arjun Dey, Kevin Fanning, Jaime E. Forero-Romero, Enrique Gaztañaga, Yulin Gong, Satya Gontcho A Gontcho, Daniel Gruen, Gaston Gutierrez, Boryana Hadzhiyska, Klaus Honscheid, Cullan Howlett, Robert Kehoe, Theodore Kisner, Anthony Kremin, Aleksandra Kusiak, Andrew Lambert, Martin Landriau, Laurent Le Guillou, Michael Levi, Martine Lokken, Marc Manera, Paul Martini, Aaron Meisner, Ramon Miquel, Kavilan Moodley, Jeffrey A. Newman, Gustavo Niz, Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, Will Percival, Francisco Prada, Ignasi Pérez-Ràfols, Bernardita Ried Guachalla, Graziano Rossi, Eusebio Sanchez, David Schlegel, Michael Schubnell, Hee-Jong Seo, Cristóbal Sifón, David Sprayberry, Gregory Tarlé, Eve M. Vavagiakis, Benjamin Alan Weaver, Edward J. Wollack, Hu Zou. 2025-02-12. Measurements of the Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect with ACT and DESI Luminous Red Galaxies. https://doi.org/10.1103/jqn8-19gx

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