Hydrodynamical simulations of the sunyaev-zel'dovich effect

Jul, 1999
8 pages
Published in:
  • Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 317 (2000) 37-44
e-Print:

Citations per year

1999200520112017202302468101214
Abstract: (arXiv)
We use a hydrodynamical N-body code to generate simulated maps, of size one square degree, of the thermal SZ effect. We study three different cosmologies: the currently-favoured low-density model with a cosmological constant, a critical-density model and a low-density open model. We stack simulation boxes corresponding to different redshifts in order to include contributions to the Compton y-parameter out to the highest necessary redshifts. Our main results are: 1. The mean y-distortion is around 4×1064 \times 10^{-6} for low-density cosmologies, and 1×1061 \times 10^{-6} for critical density. These are below current limits, but not by a wide margin in the former case. 2. In low-density cosmologies, the mean y-distortion comes from a broad range of redshifts, the bulk coming from z<2z < 2 and a tail out to z5z \sim 5. For critical-density models, most of the contribution comes from z<1z < 1. 3. The number of SZ sources above a given yy depends strongly on instrument resolution. For a one arcminute beam, there is around 0.1 sources per square degree with y>105y > 10^{-5} in a critical-density Universe, and around 8 such sources per square degree in low-density models. Low-density models with and without a cosmological constant give very similar results. 4. We estimate that the {\sc Planck} satellite will be able to see of order 25000 SZ sources if the Universe has a low density, or around 10000 if it has critical density.