A Measurement of Secondary Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies With Two Years of South Pole Telescope Observations

Abstract

We present the first three-frequency South Pole Telescope (SPT) cosmic microwave background (CMB) power spectra. The band powers presented here cover angular scales 2000 < < 9400 in frequency bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. At these frequencies and angular scales, a combination of the primary CMB anisotropy, thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effects, radio galaxies, and cosmic infrared background (CIB) contributes to the signal. We combine Planck/HFI and SPT data at 220 GHz to constrain the amplitude and shape of the CIB power spectrum and find strong evidence for non-linear clustering. We explore the SZ results using a variety of cosmological models for the CMB and CIB anisotropies and find them to be robust with one exception: allowing for spatial correlations between the thermal SZ effect and CIB significantly degrades the SZ constraints. Neglecting this potential correlation, we find the thermal SZ power at 150 GHz and = 3000 to be 3.65 ± 0.69 µK 2 , and set an upper limit on the kinetic SZ power to be less than 2.8 µK 2 at 95% confidence. When a correlation between the thermal SZ and CIB is allowed, we constrain a linear combination of thermal and kinetic SZ power: D tSZ 3000 + 0.5D kSZ 3000 = 4.60 ± 0.63 µK 2 , consistent with earlier measurements. We use the measured thermal SZ power and an analytic, thermal SZ model calibrated with simulations to determine σ 8 = 0.807 ± 0.016. Modeling uncertainties involving the astrophysics of the intracluster medium rather than the statistical uncertainty in the measured band powers are the dominant source of uncertainty on σ 8 . We also place an upper limit on the kinetic SZ power produced by patchy reionization; a companion paper uses these limits to constrain the reionization history of the Universe.

Planck2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters

“…The results from WMAP (see Bennett et al 2013 andHinshaw et al 2012 for the final nine-year WMAP results) together with those from high-resolution ground-based CMB experiments (e.g., Reichardt et al 2012b;Story et al 2013;Sievers et al 2013) are remarkably consistent with the predictions of 1 For a good review of the early history of CMB studies see Peebles et al (2009). 2 It is worth highlighting here the pre-WMAP constraints on the geometry of the Universe by the BOOMERang (Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geomagnetics; de Bernardis et al 2000) and MAXIMA (Millimeter-wave Anisotropy Experiment Imaging Array; Balbi et al 2000) experiments, for example.…”

“…The tSZ template used here is similar in shape to the Battaglia et al (2010) template that has been used extensively in the analysis of ACT and SPT data. The effects of varying tSZ and kSZ templates on high-resolution CMB experiments have been investigated by Dunkley et al (2011), Reichardt et al (2012b, and Dunkley et al (2013) who find very little effect on cosmological parameters.…”

Robust weak-lensing mass calibration of Planck galaxy clusters

“…Alternatively, keeping the Planck mass calibration fixed at (1 − b) = 0.8, the Planck team argue that their CMB and SZ-cluster data could be explained by a species-summed neutrino mass of Σm ν = (0.58 ± 0.20) eV (2.8σ significance departure from zero), a result that is in tension with the 95 per cent confidence upper limit of 0.23 eV derived from the Planck CMB analysis (P16) in combination with WMAP low-multipole polarization (Bennett et al 2013), high-multipole temperature anisotropy from SPT and ACT (Reichardt et al 2012;Das et al 2014), and the 6df, SDSS and BOSS BAO surveys (Beutler et al 2011;Padmanabhan et al 2012;Anderson et al 2012), and earlier studies using WMAP CMB data and independent X-ray and optical cluster measurements (Mantz et al 2010b;Reid et al 2010). Marginalizing over 0.7 < (1 − b) < 1.0, the evidence for massive neutrinos is weakened but still present, Σm ν = (0.40 ± 0.21) eV (1.9σ).…”

Can Zee-Babu model implemented with scalar dark matter explain both Fermi-LAT 130 GeV γ-ray excess and neutrino physics?

“…The ∆N eff is equal to the energy fraction of a Goldstone boson relative to a single neutrino: ∆N eff = T 4 α /(7/4T 4 ν ) = 4/7(43/57) 4/3 = 0.39. Actually WMAP9 and ground-based observations [53][54][55] give N eff = 3.89 ± 0.67 and Planck, the WMAP9 polarization and ground-based observations [56][57][58][59] give N eff = 3.36 ± 0.34, both at the 68% confidence leve, suggesting possible deviation from the SM prediction although the errors are large. For example, with λ Hϕ = −0.005(−0.0001) and m H = 125 GeV, the dark scalar with mass 500 MeV (70 MeV) can satisfy the condition.…”