Reconstructing Patchy Reionization from the Cosmic Microwave Background
| dc.creator | Dvorkin, Cora | |
| dc.creator | Smith, Kendrick M. | |
| dc.date | 2008-12-08 | |
| dc.date | 2009-02-09 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T12:38:49Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T12:38:49Z | |
| dc.description | We introduce a new statistical technique for extracting the inhomogeneous reionization signal from future high-sensitivity measurements of the cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization fields. If reionization is inhomogeneous, then the optical depth to recombination will be a function tau(n) of position on the sky. Anisotropies in tau(n) alter the statistics of the observed CMB via several physical mechanisms: screening of the surface of last scattering, generation of new polarization via Thomson scattering from reionization bubbles, and the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. We construct a quadratic estimator for the modes of the tau field. This estimator separates the patchy reionization signal from the CMB in the form of a noisy map, which can be cross-correlated with other probes of reionization or used as a standalone probe. A future satellite experiment with sufficient sensitivity and resolution to measure the lensed B-mode on most of the sky can constrain key parameters of patchy reionization, such as the duration of the patchy epoch or the mean bubble radius, at the ~10% level. | |
| dc.description | 21 pages, 19 figures, minor changes matching PRD published version | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1566 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.1566 | |
| dc.identifier | Phys.Rev.D79:043003, 2009 | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.79.043003 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/218898 | |
| dc.subject | Astrophysics | |
| dc.title | Reconstructing Patchy Reionization from the Cosmic Microwave Background | |
| dc.type | text |