A measurement of the mean central optical depth of galaxy clusters via the pairwise kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with SPT-3G and DES

• Main Authors: Schiappucci, E, Bianchini, F, Archipley, M, Balkenhol, L, Bleem, L. E, Chaubal, P, Crawford, T. M, Grandis, S, Omori, Y, Reichardt, C. L, Rozo, E, Rykoff, E. S, To, C, Abbott, T. M. C, Anderson, A. J, Avva, J. S, Bacon, D, Benson, B. A, Bernstein, G. M, Bocquet, S, Carlstrom, J. E, Kind, M. Carrasco, Cecil, T. W, Chang, C. L, Chichura, P. M, Costanzi, M, Cukierman, A, da Costa, L. N, Daley, C, de Haan, T, Desai, S, Dibert, K. R, Diehl, H. T, Dobbs, M. A, Doux, C, Dutcher, D, Everett, W, Feng, C, Ferguson, K. R, Ferrero, I, Foster, A, Gambrel, A. E, García-Bellido, J, Gardner, R. W, Gatti, M, Giannantonio, T, Goeckner-Wald, N, Gruen, D, Gualtieri, R, Gutierrez, G, Hinton, S. R, Holzapfel, W. L, Honscheid, K, Huang, N, James, D. J, Knox, L, Korman, M, Kuehn, K, Kuo, C. -L, Lahav, O, Lee, A. T, Lima, M, Lowitz, A. E, Lu, C, March, M, Menanteau, F, Millea, M, Miquel, R, Montgomery, J, Natoli, T, Noble, G. I, Novosad, V, Ogando, R. L. C, Padin, S, Pan, Z, Paz-Chinchón, F, Pieres, A, Malagón, A. A. Plazas, Prabhu, K, Quan, W, Rahlin, A, Raveri, M, Rodriguez-Monroy, M, Rouble, M, Sanchez, E, Smecher, G, Smith, M, Soares-Santos, M, Sobrin, J. A, Suzuki, A, Tarle, G, Thorne, B, Tucker, C, Umilta, C, Vieira, J. D, Vincenzi, M, Weaverdyck, N, Weller, J, Whitehorn, N, Wu, W. L. K
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 16-06-2023
• Subjects: Physics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2207.11937

We infer the mean optical depth of a sample of optically-selected galaxy
clusters from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) via the pairwise kinematic
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect. The pairwise kSZ signal between pairs of
clusters drawn from the DES Year-3 cluster catalog is detected at $4.1 \sigma$
in cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps from two years of
observations with the SPT-3G camera on the South Pole Telescope. After cuts,
there are 24,580 clusters in the $\sim 1,400$ deg$^2$ of the southern sky
observed by both experiments. We infer the mean optical depth of the cluster
sample with two techniques. The optical depth inferred from the pairwise kSZ
signal is $\bar{\tau}_e = (2.97 \pm 0.73) \times 10^{-3}$, while that inferred
from the thermal SZ signal is $\bar{\tau}_e = (2.51 \pm 0.55^{\text{stat}} \pm
0.15^{\rm syst}) \times 10^{-3}$. The two measures agree at $0.6 \sigma$. We
perform a suite of systematic checks to test the robustness of the analysis.