Dust Distribution during Reionization

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the impact of early universe dust produced by first-generation stars on cosmic microwave background observations, analyzing its anisotropies and comparing them with instrument sensitivities.

Contribution

It introduces a method to estimate the dust emission anisotropies during reionization and assesses their detectability with current and future instruments.

Findings

Dust anisotropies are detectable by Planck at small scales for certain parameters.

Early dust signals are comparable in magnitude to local dust at millimeter wavelengths.

The spatial distribution of dust correlates with dark matter distribution.

Abstract

The dust produced by the first generation of stars will be a foreground to cosmic microwave background. In order to evaluate the effect of this early dust, we calculate the power spectrum of the dust emission anisotropies and compare it with the sensitivity limit of the Planck satellite. The spatial distribution of the dust is estimated through the distribution of dark matter. At small angular scales ($\ell \gtrsim 1000$) the dust signal is found to be noticeable with the Planck detector for certain values of dust lifetime and production rates. The dust signal is also compared to sensitivities of other instruments. The early dust emission anisotropies are finally compared to those of local dust and they are found to be similar in magnitude at mm wavelengths.