Searching for patchy reionization from cosmic microwave background with hybrid quadratic estimators

Abstract

We propose a hybrid quadratic estimator to measure cross correlations between gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and differential screening effects arising from fluctuations in the electron column density, such as could arise from patchy reionization. The hybrid quadratic estimators are validated by simulated data sets with both Planck and CMB-Stage 4 (CMB-S4) instrumental properties and found to be able to recover the cross-power spectra with almost no biases. We apply this technique to Planck 2015 temperature data and obtain cross-power spectra between gravitational lensing and differential screening effects. Planck data alone cannot detect the patchy-reionization-induced cross-power spectrum but future experiment like CMB-S4 will be able to robustly measure the expected signal and deliver new insights on reionization.

6 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Probing Reionization with the 21 cm-Galaxy Cross Power Spectrum
• Reconstructing Patchy Reionization from the Cosmic Microwave Background
• B-mode CMB Polarization from Patchy Screening during Reionization
• Constraints on Patchy Reionization from Planck CMB Temperature Trispectrum
• Detecting Electron Density Fluctuations from Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization using a Bispectrum Approach

Cited by in corpus (10)

• CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan
• Reconstructing Patchy Reionization with Deep Learning
• Constraining reionization with the first measurement of the cross-correlation between the CMB optical-depth fluctuations and the Compton y-map
• Inference of gravitational lensing and patchy reionization with future CMB data
• Constraints on ${\tau }_{\mathrm{NL}}$ from Planck temperature and polarization
• Detectability of the ${\tau }_{es}$-21cm cross-correlation: a tomographic probe of patchy reionization
• Reconstructing patchy helium reionization using the cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure
• Lensing anomalies from the epoch of reionisation
• Cross-correlating the patchy screening and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects as a new probe of reionization
• Mapping neutral islands during end stages of reionization with photometric intergalactic medium tomography