CCA Colloquium: Nick Battaglia
Title: Constraining Galaxy Formation and Baryonic Effects on LSS with Observations of the Thermal and Kinetic Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effects
Abstract: A new window into the growth and evolution of large-scale structure has opened up with the recent observations of the thermal and kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effects. I will review recent observations of the SZ signals and highlight their expected rapid growth over the next decade with upcoming cosmic microwave background experiments, like Simons Observatory and CMB-S4. I will present ongoing work to extract SZ signals in data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and how they can be used to constrain the important baryonic process that govern galaxy formation. Time permitting, I will conclude by discussing the connections between these SZ observations and mitigating the modeling uncertainties associated with “baryonic effects” in future large-scale structure surveys like LSST.