6–10 Jul 2026
University of the Western Cape
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
**Tours now open!** Registration is now closed - All registration payments are due before 23:39 SAST on 26 June.

Detection of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich signals using Pairwise momentum estimator.

8 Jul 2026, 16:20
1h 20m
Great Hall ( University of the Western Cape)

Great Hall

University of the Western Cape

Poster Presentation Track D - Astrophysics & Space Science Poster Session 2

Speaker

Ms Ayanda Mnikathi

Description

The kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (kSZ) effect comes from the Doppler shift of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) photons scattered by moving galaxy clusters. It offers a strong way to study the large-scale velocity field and test cosmological models. In this thesis, we aim to detect the kSZ signal by using the pairwise momentum estimator on data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol). This method improves the weak kSZ signal by measuring the average momentum between pairs of galaxy clusters. This allows us to extract information about their peculiar velocities. We combine high-resolution CMB temperature maps from ACTPol with external DES Legacy Survey cluster catalogs for extra kSZ signals.

Apply for student award at which level: MSc
Consent on use of personal information: Abstract Submission Yes, I ACCEPT

Author

Presentation materials

There are no materials yet.