SIMULATIONS OF THE MICROWAVE SKY

By N. Sehgal, Paul Bode, Sudeep Das, C. Hernández-Monteagudo, K. Huffenberger, Yen-Ting Lin, Jeremiah P. Ostriker, Hy Trac. 2009

160 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We create realistic, full-sky, half-arcminute resolution simulations of the microwave sky matched to the most recent astrophysical observations. The primary purpose of these simulations is to test the data reduction pipeline for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) experiment; however, we have widened the frequency coverage beyond the ACT bands and utilized the easily accessible HEALPix map format to make these simulations applicable to other current and near future microwave background experiments. Some of the novel features of these simulations are that the radio and infrared galaxy populations are correlated with the galaxy cluster and group populations, the primordial microwave background is lensed by the dark matter structure in the simulation via a ray-tracing code, the contribution to the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) signals from galaxy clusters, groups, and the intergalactic medium has been included, and the gas prescription to model the SZ signals has been refined to match the most recent X-ray observations. The cosmology adopted in these simulations is also consistent with the WMAP 5-year parameter measurements. From these simulations we find a slope for the Y200–M200 relation that is only slightly steeper than self-similar, with an intrinsic scatter in the relation of ∼14%. Regarding the contamination of cluster SZ flux by radio galaxies, we find for 148 GHz (90 GHz) only 3% (4%) of halos have their SZ decrements contaminated at a level of 20% or more. We find the contamination levels higher for infrared galaxies. However, at 90 GHz, less than 20% of clusters with M200 > 2.5 × 1014M☉ and z < 1.2 have their SZ decrements filled in at a level of 20% or more. At 148 GHz, less than 20% of clusters with M200 > 2.5 × 1014M☉ and z < 0.8 have their SZ decrements filled in at a level of 50% or larger. Our models also suggest that a population of very high flux infrared galaxies, which are likely lensed sources, contribute most to the SZ contamination of very massive clusters at 90 and 148 GHz. These simulations are publicly available and should serve as a useful tool for microwave surveys to cross-check SZ cluster detection, power spectrum, and cross-correlation analyses.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/62ce6214a79bec855fcbae872421e11b0b0b3713

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: likelihood for small-scale CMB data (2013, background): “The cross-correlation of radio sources and both tSZ and CIB sources is also expected to be small (e.g., Sehgal et al. 2010, who ﬁnd a correlation of only a few per cent in simulations).”
A MEASUREMENT OF GRAVITATIONAL LENSING OF THE MICROWAVE BACKGROUND USING SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE DATA (2012, methodology): “To test this possibility, we use two separate lines of investigation: Gaussian random fields that have a CIB field completely correlated with the lensing convergence map, and the simulations of Sehgal et al. (2010).”
Cosmological Parameters from Observations of Galaxy Clusters (2011, background): “…the optimal observables (i.e. the best mass proxies) to measure from the survey data in the current, low signal-to-noise ratio regime; calibrating the mass scaling for these observables; and understanding in detail the impact of contamination by radio and infrared sources (Sehgal et al. 2010).”
A MEASUREMENT OF SECONDARY COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND ANISOTROPIES FROM THE 2500 SQUARE-DEGREE SPT-SZ SURVEY (2014, methodology): “Lin et al. (2009) and Sehgal et al. (2010) show that the number of radio sources with significant mm wavelength flux that are correlated with galaxy clusters is expected to be low.”
A MEASUREMENT OF SECONDARY COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND ANISOTROPIES WITH TWO YEARS OF SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS (2011, methodology): “The kSZ power spectrum is taken from the Sehgal et al. (2010) simulations and has an amplitude of 2.05µK2 at ` = 3000.”
ACTPol: a polarization-sensitive receiver for the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (2010, background): “We aim to find ∼ 1000 clusters in the ACTPol surveys.(42,43)”
Planck 2013 results. XX. Cosmology from Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster counts (2013, result): “Comparison of simulated Y500–M500 relations and data We first compared the Y500–M500 relations from 14 different analyses done by seven groups (Nagai 2006; Yang et al. 2010; Sehgal et al. 2010; Krause et al. 2012; Battaglia et al. 2012; Kay et al. 2012; Sembolini et al. 2013).”
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: temperature and gravitational lensing power spectrum measurements from three seasons of data (2013, methodology): “Systematic contamination of the estimator by the SZ signal, IR and radio sources was estimated in [8] using the simulations from [35].”
A SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH-SELECTED SAMPLE OF THE MOST MASSIVE GALAXY CLUSTERS IN THE 2500 deg2 SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE SURVEY (2011, methodology): “…al. 2004; Wang et al. 2004; Lima & Hu 2007), and this constraining power has now been demonstrated with real cluster samples identified in optical (e.g., Rozo et al. 2010), X-ray (e.g., Vikhlinin et al. 2009b), and, most recently, millimeter (mm) (Vanderlinde et al. 2010; Sehgal et al. 2010b) data.”
SIMULATIONS OF THE SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH POWER SPECTRUM WITH ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS FEEDBACK (2010, methodology): “This model (Sehgal et al. 2010, S10) allows map generation by painting dark matter halos in N-body simulations with gas.”
X-RAY PROPERTIES OF THE FIRST SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT SELECTED GALAXY CLUSTER SAMPLE FROM THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE (2010, background): “The average radio source contamination in SZ surveys has been recently estimated in simulations of the microwave sky by Sehgal et al. (2010).”
GALAXY CLUSTERS SELECTED WITH THE SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT FROM 2008 SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS (2010, methodology): “Calculations (Lin et al. 2009) and explicit simulations (Sehgal et al. 2010) demonstrate that, even taking into account the expected correlation between clusters and radio sources, these sources are not expected to significantly affect the SZ flux in more than 1% percent of galaxy clusters above 2…”
THE ATACAMA COSMOLOGY TELESCOPE: COSMOLOGY FROM GALAXY CLUSTERS DETECTED VIA THE SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT (2010, methodology): “Hereafter, the simulations we refer to are those discussed in Sehgal et al. (2010), which include the SZ signal, lensed primary CMB, Galactic dust, and radio and infrared sources correlated with SZ clusters as suggested by observations.”
SEVEN-YEAR WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE (WMAP) OBSERVATIONS: COSMOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION (2010, result): “As the predictions for the SZ power spectrum available today (see, e.g., Shaw et al. 2009; Sehgal et al. 2010, and references therein) are similar to the prediction of Komatsu & Seljak (2002) (for example, Lueker et al. (2010) found ASZ = 0.55 ± 0.21 for the prediction of Sehgal et al. (2010),…”
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS FROM SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH-SELECTED CLUSTERS WITH X-RAY OBSERVATIONS IN THE FIRST 178 deg2 OF THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE SURVEY (2011, methodology): “Measurements of the cluster abundance using optical, X-ray, and SZ selection methods have been used to place competitive constraints on cosmology and dark energy parameters (e.g., Vikhlinin et al. 2009b; Mantz et al. 2010c; Rozo et al. 2010; Vanderlinde et al. 2010; Sehgal et al. 2010).”
EXTRAGALACTIC MILLIMETER-WAVE SOURCES IN SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE SURVEY DATA: SOURCE COUNTS, CATALOG, AND STATISTICS FOR AN 87 SQUARE-DEGREE FIELD (2009, background): “…sources have the power to inform both astrophysical models of their emission and predictions for the extent of their contamination to the CMB power spectrum (e.g., Toffolatti et al. 2005; Reichardt et al. 2009) and the SZ signal from galaxy clusters (e.g., Lin & Mohr 2007; Sehgal et al. 2010).”
COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND CONSTRAINTS ON THE DURATION AND TIMING OF REIONIZATION FROM THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE (2011, background): “However, we find that the publicly available simulations of Sehgal et al. (2010) predict a large anti-correlation.”
A MEASUREMENT OF THE DAMPING TAIL OF THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND POWER SPECTRUM WITH THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE (2011, methodology): “The SZ component uses the thermal SZ template of Sehgal et al. (2010a), which has a shape similar to the templates from more recent models (Trac et al. 2011; Shaw et al. 2010; Battaglia et al. 2010), normalized to D` = 5.5 µK 2 at ` = 3000.”