Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A measurement of galaxy cluster temperatures through relativistic corrections to the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect

Coulton, William R., Duivenvoorden, Adriaan J., Atkins, Zachary, Battaglia, Nicholas, Battistelli, Elia Stefano, Bond, J. Richard, Cai, Hongbo, Calabrese, Erminia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0837-0068, Choi, Steve K., Crowley, Kevin T., Devlin, Mark J., Dunkley, Jo, Ferraro, Simone, Guan, Yilun, Hervias-Caimapo, Carlos, Hill, J. Colin, Hilton, Matt, Hincks, Adam D., Kosowsky, Arthur, Madhavacheril, Mathew S. and van Marrewijk, Jodhiwa 2026. Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A measurement of galaxy cluster temperatures through relativistic corrections to the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. Physical Review D (particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology) 113 (4) , 043520. 10.1103/n7p5-pc66

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Abstract

The high electron temperature in galaxy clusters ( > 1 keV or > 10 7 K ) leads to corrections at the level of a few percent in their thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect signatures. Both the size and frequency dependence of these corrections, which are known as relativistic temperature corrections, depend upon the temperature of the objects. In this work we exploit this effect to measure the average temperature of a stack of Compton- y selected clusters. Specifically, we apply the “spectroscopic method” and search for the temperature that best fits the clusters’ signal measured at frequencies from 30 to 545 GHz by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and satellite. We measure the average temperature of clusters detected in the Atacama Cosmology Telescope maps to be 8.5 ± 2.4 keV , with an additional systematic error of comparable amplitude dominated by passband uncertainty. Upcoming surveys, such as the Simons Observatory and CMB-S4, have the potential to dramatically improve upon these measurements and thereby enable precision studies of cluster temperatures with millimeter observations. The key challenge for future observations will be mitigating instrumental systematic effects, which already limit this analysis.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Additional Information:	The full author list can be seen on the journal web page - https://doi.org/10.1103/n7p5-pc66. License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Start Date: 2026-02-18
Publisher:	American Physical Society
ISSN:	2470-0010
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	5 March 2026
Date of Acceptance:	23 December 2025
Last Modified:	05 Mar 2026 12:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/185546

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