Speaker
Description
The kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (kSZ) is induced by the scattering of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons with a medium of free electrons that possess a non-zero bulk velocity. These scatterings alter the small-scale CMB temperature anisotropies, which correlate with the growth of ionising regions during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Hence, the kSZ observations can be merged with measurements of the 21-cm power spectrum from the intergalactic medium during the EoR to gain insights into the process of reionisation and the characteristics of the first stars and galaxies.
In this talk, we propose a simple yet effective parametric method that establishes a connection between the 21-cm and kSZ power spectra. Through an MCMC analysis, we discover that these two observables exhibit complementary characteristics, leading to significantly improved constraints on reionisation compared to analysing each dataset separately.
I will present how the present-day upper limits from the MWA collaboration (Trott et al. 2020), future measurements of the 21-cm power spectrum with the SKA, and the kSZ power spectrum measurement are combined to constrain models of cosmic reionisation. Our findings demonstrate that a few well-informed measurements of the 21-cm power spectrum and kSZ data can precisely determine the reionisation history of the Universe.
