Detecting electron density fluctuations from cosmic microwave background polarization using a bispectrum approach

Chang Feng, Gilbert Holder

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Recent progress in high sensitivity cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiments opens up a window on large scale structure (LSS), as CMB polarization fluctuations on small angular scales can arise from a combination of LSS and ionization fluctuations in the late Universe. Gravitational lensing effects can be extracted from CMB data sets with quadratic estimators but reconstructions of electron density fluctuations (EDFs) with quadratic estimators are found to be significantly biased by the much larger lensing effects in the secondary CMB fluctuations. In this paper we establish a bispectrum formalism using tracers of LSS to extract the subdominant EDFs from CMB polarization data. We find that this bispectrum can effectively reconstruct angular band powers of cross-correlation between EDFs and LSS tracers. Next generation CMB polarization experiments in conjunction with galaxy surveys and cosmic infrared background experiments can detect signatures of EDFs with high significance.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number123523
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume97
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 15 2018

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Nuclear and High Energy Physics

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