Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect in Cross-Correlation: The Observer's Manual
Abstract
The Integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect is a direct signature of the presence of dark energy in the universe, in the absence of spatial curvature. A powerful method for observing the ISW effect is through cross-correlation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with a tracer of the matter in the low redshift universe. In this paper, we describe the dependence of the obtained cross-correlation signal on the geometry and other properties of a survey of the low redshift universe. We show that an all-sky survey with about 10 million galaxies, almost uniformly distributed within 0<z<1 should yield a near optimal ISW detection, at ~ 5\sigma level. In order to achieve this level of signal-to-noise, the systematic anisotropies in the survey must be below ~ 0.1 %, on the scale of ~ 10 degrees on the sky, while the systematic error in redshift estimates must be less than 0.05. Then, we argue that, while an ISW detection will not be a good way of constraining the conventional properties of dark energy, it could be a valuable means of testing alternative theories of gravity on large physical scales.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0401166,
title = {Integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect in Cross-Correlation: The Observer's Manual},
author = {Niayesh Afshordi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0401166},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
9 pages, 9 Figures, Extended discussion of different observational systematics, Accepted for publication in PRD