3-8 June 2012
Hotel Fiesta Americana
Mexico/General timezone
- pascos2012@pegaso.fisica.unam.mx
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Contribution Contributed (oral)
Speakers
- Dr. Aravind NATARAJAN
Primary authors
- Dr. Aravind NATARAJAN (Carnegie Mellon University)
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Abstract content
If the Universe reionizes in patches, the observed optical depth \tau varies with the line of sight. Scattering of CMB photons by free electrons results in a damping of the CMB power spectra by a factor exp(-2\tau). When the optical depth is anisotropic, the damping has an angular dependence. We show that this angular dependence adds power to the CMB TT spectrum on small scales. We use data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope to constrain the angular variation of \tau, and hence place constraints on certain reionization models.