Deconstructing Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich - Gravitational Lensing Cross-Correlations: Implications for the Intracluster Medium

Understand

Recent first detections of the cross-correlation of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) signal in Planck cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps with gravitational lensing maps inferred from the Planck CMB data and the CFHTLenS galaxy survey provide new probes of the relationship between baryons and dark matter.

• Using cosmological hydrodynamics simulations, we show that these cross-correlation signals are dominated by contributions from hot gas in the intracluster medium (ICM), rather than diffuse, unbound gas located beyond the virial radius (the "missing baryons").
• Thus, these cross-correlations offer a tool with which to study the ICM over a wide range of halo masses and redshifts.
• In particular, we show that the tSZ - CMB lensing cross-correlation is more sensitive to gas in lower-mass, higher-redshift halos and gas at larger cluster-centric radii than the tSZ - galaxy lensing cross-correlation.