First Constraints on the Epoch of Reionization Using the Non-Gaussianity of the Kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect from the South Pole Telescope and Herschel-SPIRE Observations

• Published in: Physical review letters 2024-09, Vol.133 (12)
• Main Authors: Ade, P. A. R., Anderson, A. J., Ansarinejad, B., Archipley, M., Austermann, J. E., Beall, J. A., Benabed, K., Benson, B. A., Bianchini, F., Bleem, L. E., Bock, J., Bouchet, F. R., Camphuis, E., Carlstrom, J. E., Cecil, T. W., Chang, C. L., Chaubal, P., Chiang, H. C., Chichura, P. M., Chou, T. -L., Citron, R., Coerver, A., Crawford, T. M., Crites, A. T., Daley, C., Dibert, K. R., Dobbs, M. A., Doussot, A., Dutcher, D., Feng, C., Ferguson, K. R., Fichman, K., Foster, A., Galli, S., Gallicchio, J., Gambrel, A. E., Gardner, R. W., Ge, F., George, E. M., Goeckner-Wald, N., Gualtieri, R., Guns, S., Gupta, N., de Haan, T., Halverson, N. W., Hivon, E., Holder, G. P., Holzapfel, W. L., Hood, J. C., Hrubes, J. D., Hryciuk, A., Huang, N., Hubmayr, J., Irwin, K. D., Kéruzoré, F., Khalife, A. R., Knox, L., Kornoelje, K., Lee, A. T., Levy, K., Lowitz, A. E., Lu, C., Maniyar, A., Martsen, E. S., McMahon, J. J., Millea, M., Nakato, Y., Nibarger, J. P., Noble, G. I., Novosad, V., Omori, Y., Padin, S., Paschos, P., Patil, S., Phadke, K. A., Prabhu, K., Pryke, C., Rahimi, M., Rahlin, A., Reichardt, C. L., Rouble, M., Ruhl, J. E., Saliwanchik, B. R., Schaffer, K. K., Sievers, C., Smecher, G., Sobrin, J. A., Stark, A. A., Stephen, J., Tandoi, C., Thorne, B., Trendafilova, C., Tucker, C., Veach, T., Viero, M. P., Wang, G., Whitehorn, N., Yefremenko, V., Young, M. R., Zebrowski, J. A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
• ISSN: 0031-9007
• DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.133.121004

Here, we report results from an analysis aimed at detecting the trispectrum of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (kSZ) effect by combining data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and Herschel-SPIRE experiments over a 100deg2 field. The SPT observations combine data from the previous and current surveys, namely SPTpol and SPT-3G, to achieve depths of 4.5, 3, and 16 μ K -arcmin in bands centered at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. For SPIRE, we include data from the 600 and 857 GHz bands. We reconstruct the velocity-induced large-scale correlation of the small-scale kSZ signal with a quadratic estimator that uses two cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps, constructed by optimally combining data from all the frequency bands. We reject the null hypothesis of a zero trispectrum at 10.3σ level. However, the measured trispectrum contains contributions from both the kSZ and other undesired components, such as CMB lensing and astrophysical foregrounds, with kSZ being sub-dominant. We use the agora simulations to estimate the expected signal from CMB lensing and astrophysical foregrounds. After accounting for the contributions from CMB lensing and foreground signals, we do not detect an excess kSZ-only trispectrum and use this nondetection to set constraints on reionization. By applying a prior based on observations of the Gunn-Peterson trough, we obtain an upper limit on the duration of reionization of Δ zre,50