Joint measurements of thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and cosmic infrared background cross-correlations with cosmic shear

Abstract

The cross-correlation between weak lensing (WL) and the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect probes the connection between the matter distribution and the thermal state of baryons at low redshift ($z\lesssim1$). A key systematic in such measurements is contamination by extragalactic foregrounds, particularly the cosmic infrared background (CIB). Here we describe the CIB spectral energy distribution (SED) with a small number of physically motivated spectral parameters, calibrated against external measurements of the radiation field intensity in galaxies. Their uncertainty is then propagated into the recovered WL$\times$tSZ signal in component separation at the level of the multi-frequency cross-power spectra rather than the map level. Applying this method to cosmic shear from the Dark Energy Survey and frequency maps from Planck, we show that the resulting measurements of the WL$\times$tSZ power spectrum are insensitive to variations in the effective CIB spectral index, radio source contamination, and the scale and redshift dependence of the SED. The measurements are robust to realistic foreground uncertainties, supporting their use as probes of baryonic feedback and cosmology, and providing a framework for future high-precision surveys. We compare our measurements with the Flamingo suite of hydrodynamical simulations and find that they are compatible with the Flamingo predictions for a low amplitude of matter fluctuations, parametrised by $S_8$, strongly disfavouring the larger $S_8$ preferred by Planck. This result is independent of the impact of baryonic feedback as modelled in Flamingo.