The Impact of Secondary non-Gaussianities in the CMB on Cosmological Parameter Estimation

Understand

We consider corrections to the underlying cosmology due to secondary contributions from weak gravitational lensing, the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect contained in the trispectrum.

• We incorporate these additional contributions to the covariance of a binned angular power spectrum of temperature anisotropies in the analysis of current and prospective data sets.
• Although recent experiments such as ACBAR and CBI are not particularly sensitive to these additional non-Gaussian effects, the interpretation of Planck and CMBPol anisotropy spectra will require an accounting of non-Gaussian covariance leading to a degradation in cosmological parameter estimates by up to 20% and 30%, respectively.