Mapping the Dark Matter through the CMB Damping Tail

Abstract

The lensing of CMB photons by intervening large-scale structure leaves a characteristic imprint on its arcminute-scale anisotropy that can be used to map the dark matter distribution in projection on degree scales or ~100 Mpc/h comoving. We introduce a new algorithm for mass reconstruction which optimally utilizes information from the weak lensing of CMB anisotropies in the damping tail. It can ultimately map individual degree scale mass structures with high signal-to-noise. To achieve this limit an experiment must produce a high signal-to-noise, foreground-free CMB map of arcminute scale resolution, specifically with a FWHM beam of < 5' and a noise level of < 15 (10^-6-arcmin) or 41 (uK-arcmin).