Probing helium reionization with kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich tomography

Abstract

Reionization of helium is expected to occur at redshifts $z\sim 3$ and have important consequences for quasar populations, galaxy formation, and the morphology of the intergalactic medium, but there is little known empirically about the process. Here we show that kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) tomography, based on the combination of CMB measurements and galaxy surveys, can be used to infer the primordial helium abundance as well as the time and duration of helium reionization. We find a high-significance detection at $\sim 10\sigma$ can be expected from Vera Rubin Observatory and CMB-S4 in the near future. A more robust characterization of helium reionization will require next-generation experiments like MegaMapper (a proposed successor to DESI) and CMB-HD.

arXiv comment4+2 pages, 2 figures, comments welcome

References in corpus (43)

• Efficient Computation of CMB anisotropies in closed FRW models
• The Simons Observatory: Science goals and forecasts
• Radiative transfer in a clumpy universe: IV. New synthesis models of the cosmic UV/X-ray background
• The SDSS Quasar Survey: Quasar Luminosity Function from Data Release Three
• Warm Dark Matter as a solution to the small scale crisis: new constraints from high redshift Lyman-alpha forest data
• The Assembly of the First Massive Black Holes
• The effects of He I 10830 on helium abundance determinations
• The diversity of quasars unified by accretion and orientation
• Detection of Extended He II Reionization in the Temperature Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium
• The first ultraviolet quasar stacked spectrum at z=2.4 from WFC3
• HyRec: A fast and highly accurate primordial hydrogen and helium recombination code
• The z=5 Quasar Luminosity Function from SDSS Stripe 82
• The clustering of intermediate redshift quasars as measured by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• The SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: The Quasar Luminosity Function from Data Release Nine
• The Sherwood simulation suite: overview and data comparisons with the Lyman-alpha forest at redshifts 2 < z < 5
• GOLDRUSH. II. Clustering of Galaxies at $z\sim 4-6$ Revealed with the Half-Million Dropouts Over the 100 deg${}^2$ Area Corresponding to 1 Gpc${}^3$
• Evolution of the Quasar Luminosity Function Over 3 < z < 5 in the COSMOS Survey Field
• The thermal history of the intergalactic medium down to redshift z=1.5: a new curvature measurement
• The Co-Formation of Spheroids and Quasars Traced in their Clustering
• The Faint End of the z=5 Quasar Luminosity Function from the CFHTLS
• Models of the Thermal Evolution of the Intergalactic Medium After Reionization
• Constraining local non-Gaussianities with kSZ tomography
• Detecting patchy reionization in the CMB
• Reconstruction of the remote dipole and quadrupole fields from the kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich and polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich effects
• The Benefits of CMB Delensing
• The Lyman alpha forest flux probability distribution at z>3
• Statistical Detection of the HeII Transverse Proximity Effect: Evidence for Sustained Quasar Activity for $>$25 Million Years
• Helium Reionization Simulations. II. Signatures of Quasar Activity on the IGM
• Characterizing the Epoch of Reionization with the small-scale CMB: constraints on the optical depth and physical parameters
• Mitigating the optical depth degeneracy using the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect with CMB-S4
• Detecting Helium Reionization with Fast Radio Bursts
• HST/COS Observations of Thirteen New He II Quasars
• Polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich tomography
• Probing correlated compensated isocurvature perturbations using scale-dependent galaxy bias
• Cosmology with the moving lens effect
• Towards testing CMB anomalies using the kinetic and polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich effects
• Fast Radio Burst Dispersion Measure Distribution as a Probe of Helium Reionization
• Velocity reconstruction with the cosmic microwave background and galaxy surveys
• Thermal state of the intergalactic medium at $z\sim 2-4$
• Reconstructing large scales at cosmic dawn
• Helium Reionization Simulations. III. The Helium Lyman-$\alpha$ Forest
• Quasar UV Luminosity Function at $3.5<z<5.0$ from SDSS Deep Imaging Data
• Constraining the temperature-density relation of the intergalactic medium with the Lyman-$\alpha$ and $\beta$ forests

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Probing Physics Beyond the Standard Model: Limits from BBN and the CMB Independently and Combined
• Probing light relics through cosmic dawn
• Transverse velocities and matter gradient correlations: a new signal and a new challenge to moving-lens analyses
• Cosmological probes of helium reionization
• Reconstructing patchy helium reionization using the cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure
• A Novel kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Estimator for Electron-Electron Correlations