Updates on fundamental science from the secondary CMB

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• Matthew Johnson (Perimeter Institute and York University)
• Tuesday 06 May 2025, 13:00-14:00
• CMS, Pav. B, CTC Common Room (B1.19) [Potter Room].

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Thomas Colas.

A major frontier in cosmic microwave background (CMB) science is the study of secondary anisotropies—temperature and polarization anisotropies induced by the gravitational, electromagnetic, or beyond-standard-model (BSM) interactions of CMB photons with large-scale structure (LSS) over cosmic history. Leveraging their distinct statistical properties and cross-correlations with LSS enables us to isolate these secondary anisotropies from the primary CMB and extract new astrophysical and cosmological information. In this talk, I discuss how secondary anisotropies from electromagnetic interactions (Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effects) and hypothetical BSM particles (dark screening) can serve as probes of fundamental physics. I present a general formalism for capturing the information content of secondary anisotropies. I then give a summary of existing measurements of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (kSZ), polarized Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (pSZ), and dark screening effects. Next I provide an update on how these measurements constrain large-scale homogeneity, primordial non-Gaussianity, isocurvature, and BSM particles (axions and dark photons). Looking ahead to the high-resolution, low-noise, large-volume frontier, I discuss how upcoming observations from the Simons Observatory, combined with LSS surveys like DESI and LSST , will significantly improve these results and allow for novel tests of fundamental physics.

This talk is part of the Cosmology Lunch series.

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