Abstract
We present the first detection of a correlation between the Lyman- forest and cosmic microwave background gravitational lensing. For each Lyman- forest in SDSS-III/BOSS DR12, we correlate the one-dimensional power spectrum with the cosmic microwave background lensing convergence on the same line of sight from Planck. This measurement constitutes a position-dependent power spectrum, or a squeezed bispectrum, and quantifies the nonlinear response of the Lyman- forest power spectrum to a large-scale overdensity. The signal is measured at and is consistent with the expectation of the standard cosmological model. We measure the linear bias of the Lyman- forest with respect to the dark matter distribution and constrain a combination of nonlinear terms including the nonlinear bias. This new observable provides a consistency check for the Lyman- forest as a large-scale structure probe and tests our understanding of the relation between intergalactic gas and dark matter. In the future, it could be used to test hydrodynamical simulations and calibrate the relation between the Lyman- forest and dark matter.
- Received 25 July 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.94.103506
© 2016 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Synopsis
Seeing Dark Matter Through the Clouds
Published 9 November 2016
A correlation between the cosmic microwave background and hydrogen absorption lines may reveal a connection between dark matter and intergalactic gas clouds.
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