Constraining the optical depth of galaxies and velocity bias with cross-correlation between kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect and peculiar velocity field

TL;DR

This paper uses cross-correlation between the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect and peculiar velocity fields to constrain galaxy optical depth and velocity bias, revealing scale-dependent bias and providing insights into galaxy kinematics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to constrain galaxy optical depth and velocity bias using kSZ-velocity cross-correlation, with novel findings on scale-dependent velocity bias.

Findings

Best-fit optical depth: (1.18 ± 0.24) × 10^{-4}

Detection of negative small-scale velocity bias

Large-scale velocity bias consistent with unity

Abstract

We calculate the cross-correlation function $\langle (\Delta T/T)(\mathbf{v}\cdot \mathbf{n}/\sigma_{v}) \rangle$ between the kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich (kSZ) effect and the reconstructed peculiar velocity field using linear perturbation theory, to constrain the optical depth $\tau$ and peculiar velocity bias of central galaxies with Planck data. We vary the optical depth $\tau$ and the velocity bias function $b_{v}(k)=1+b(k/k_{0})^{n}$, and fit the model to the data, with and without varying the calibration parameter $y_{0}$ that controls the vertical shift of the correlation function. By constructing a likelihood function and constraining $\tau$, $b$ and $n$ parameters, we find that the quadratic power-law model of velocity bias $b_{v}(k)=1+b(k/k_{0})^{2}$ provides the best-fit to the data. The best-fit values are $\tau=(1.18 \pm 0.24) \times 10^{-4}$, $b=-0.84^{+0.16}_{-0.20}$ and $y_{0}=(12.39^{+3.65}_{-3.66})\times 10^{-9}$ ($68\%$ confidence level). The probability of $b>0$ is only $3.12 \times 10^{-8}$ for the parameter $b$, which clearly suggests a detection of scale-dependent velocity bias. The fitting results indicate that the large-scale ($k \leq 0.1\,h\,{\rm Mpc}^{-1}$) velocity bias is unity, while on small scales the bias tends to become negative. The value of $\tau$ is consistent with the stellar mass--halo mass and optical depth relation proposed in the previous literatures, and the negative velocity bias on small scales is consistent with the peak background-split theory. Our method provides a direct tool to study the gaseous and kinematic properties of galaxies.