Open AccessReconstructing Sunyaev–Zel'dovich clusters in future cosmic microwave background experiments
Author(s) -
Pierpaoli Elena,
Anthoine S.,
Huffenberger K.,
Daubechies I.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.08896.x
Subject(s) - physics , cosmic microwave background , planck , astrophysics , galaxy cluster , cosmic background radiation , cosmology , estimator , sunyaev–zel'dovich effect , noise (video) , cluster (spacecraft) , south pole telescope , galaxy , anisotropy , statistics , optics , mathematics , artificial intelligence , computer science , image (mathematics) , programming language
We present a new method for component separation aimed at extracting Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) galaxy clusters from multifrequency maps of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. This method is designed to recover non‐Gaussian, spatially localized and sparse signals. We first characterize the cluster non‐Gaussianity by studying it on simulated SZ maps. We then apply our estimator on simulated observations of the Planck and Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) experiments. The method presented here outperforms multifrequency Wiener filtering, both in the reconstructed average intensity for given input and in the associated error. In the absence of point source contamination, this technique reconstructs the ACT ( Planck ) bright (big) cluster central y parameter with an intensity that is about 84 (43) per cent of the original input value. The associated error in the reconstruction is about 12 and 27 per cent for the 50 (12) ACT ( Planck ) clusters considered. For ACT, the error is dominated by beam smearing. In the Planck case, the error in the reconstruction is largely determined by the noise level: a noise reduction by a factor of 7 would imply almost perfect reconstruction and 10 per cent error for a large sample of clusters. We conclude that the selection function of Planck clusters will strongly depend on the noise properties in different sky regions, as well as the specific cluster extraction method assumed.