The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect and Large-Scale Structure

Abstract: The thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect is the inverse-Compton scattering of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons off hot, ionized electrons, primarily located in galaxy groups and clusters. Recent years have seen immense improvement in our ability to probe cosmology and the astrophysics of the intracluster medium using the tSZ signal. Here, I describe cross-correlations of the tSZ effect measured in Planck data with gravitational lensing maps from Planck and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey, as well as hydrodynamical simulations which show that such measurements do not probe "missing baryons," but rather the pressure of ionized gas in groups and clusters over a wide range of halo masses and redshifts. I also present recent measurements of higher-order tSZ statistics using data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, which yield strong constraints on the amplitude of density fluctuations. I describe stacking analyses of tSZ data from Planck, focusing on the behavior of the gas pressure in low-mass galaxy groups. I close with a prediction for the tSZ monopole, including relativistic corrections, which is the largest guaranteed spectral distortion signal for the proposed Primordial Inflation Explorer mission. The tSZ monopole will yield a direct measurement of the total thermal energy in ionized electrons in the observable universe.