30Wednesday, Apr. 30
Nick Battaglia (Carnegie Mellon)
12:15 PM
622 Space Sciences
Measurements of the CMB primary anisotropies have been the
backbone of modern precision cosmology. Recently, high resolution CMB
measurements from experiments, such as the Atacama Cosmology
Telescope, the South Pole Telescope, and the Planck satellite are
probing angular scales where the secondary anisotropies dominate over the
primary. I will focus on the secondary anisotropies caused by the
thermal and kinetic Sunyaev Zel'dovich effects. Our ability to obtain
cosmological information from these secondaries is limited by our
theoretical understanding of the baryons in the large-scale structure
between us and the primary CMB. I will present numerical simulations
that model these baryons and attempt to constrain various cosmological
parameters. Additionally, I will discuss the wealth of astrophysical
large-scale structure information (in particular galaxy cluster
astrophysics) that is interconnected with these secondaries.