Planck 2015 results. XXII. A map of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect

TL;DR

The paper presents all-sky maps of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect from Planck data, analyzes their properties, and compares the measurements to models to inform cluster physics and cosmology.

Contribution

It provides the first all-sky y-maps of the tSZ effect from Planck, along with detailed noise and foreground analysis, and compares the results with theoretical models.

Findings

The y-maps are dominated by tSZ signal at multipoles 20-600.

The power spectrum and higher order statistics agree with physical models.

Foreground residuals are effectively minimized with specific masks.

Abstract

We have constructed all-sky y-maps of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect by applying specifically tailored component separation algorithms to the 30 to 857 GHz frequency channel maps from the Planck satellite survey. These reconstructed y-maps are delivered as part of the Planck 2015 release. The y-maps are characterised in terms of noise properties and residual foreground contamination, mainly thermal dust emission at large angular scales and CIB and extragalactic point sources at small angular scales. Specific masks are defined to minimize foreground residuals and systematics. Using these masks we compute the y-map angular power spectrum and higher order statistics. From these we conclude that the y-map is dominated by tSZ signal in the multipole range, 20-600. We compare the measured tSZ power spectrum and higher order statistics to various physically motivated models and discuss the implications of our results in terms of cluster physics and cosmology.