Weak lensing of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich sky

Abstract

We address the question of whether the angular power spectrum of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) sky is further distorted by weak gravitational lensing of foreground large-scale structures. Using an analytic approach to both gaseous and dark halo models, we show that the contamination of weak lensing in the measurement of SZ power power is negligibly small, and relatively corrections |ΔC_l|/C_l are less than 3% up to l=10^5. This arises from both the weaker gravitational potentials of low-redshift matter inhomogeneities that can act as lenses for SZ sources (clusters) and the shallower shape of intrinsic SZ power spectrum at large l, in contrast to the cosmic microwave background which can be significantly affected by weak lensing because of the distant location and significant damping of its intrinsic power spectrum at small angular scales.