Primordial gravitational wave phenomenology with polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich tomography

Understand

The detection and characterization of primordial gravitational waves through their impact on the polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a primary science goal of current and future observations of the CMB.

• An ancillary dataset that will become accessible with the great leaps in sensitivity of CMB experiments is the polarized Sunyaev Zel'dovich (pSZ) effect, small-scale CMB polarization anisotropies induced by scattering from free electrons in the post-reionization Universe.
• The cross correlation of the pSZ effect with galaxy surveys, a technique known as pSZ tomography, can be used to reconstruct the remote quadrupole field: the CMB quadrupole observed from different locations in the Universe.
• Primordial gravitational waves leave a distinct imprint on the remote quadrupole field, making pSZ tomography a potential new method to characterize their properties.