2004/01/16 by T. A. Enßlin, Torsten A. Ensslin, Steen H. Hansen +2
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Photocathodes and Microchannel Plates #Superconducting and THz Device Technology #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0401337
4 pages, 2 figures, submitted
arxiv created 2004/01/16 · openalex publication_date 2004/01/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Populations of relativistic electrons in clusters of galaxies should imprint\na characteristic spectral distortion signature on the Cosmic Microwave\nBackground photons - the relativistic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect. We\ninvestigate how sensitive PLANCK and successor experiments will be in detecting\nor constraining the total optical depth tau of relativistic electrons. We find\nan expected sensitivity of PLANCK of sigmatau ~ 2 10-5 for an individual\ncluster, which is too insensitive to detect even optimistic scenarios, which\npredict tau ~ 10-6 to 10-7. However, by stacking the PLANCK-signal of all SZ\ndetectable clusters the relativistic SZ effect can be statistically probed to a\nsensitivity level of sigmatau ~ 10-7. PLANCK successor experiments will be\nable to probe even conservative scenarios of relativistic electron populations\nin clusters of galaxies.\n