Radio Point Sources and the Thermal SZ Power Spectrum

Abstract

Radio point sources are strongly correlated with clusters of galaxies, so a significant fraction of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect signal could be affected by point source contamination. Based on empirical estimates of the radio galaxy population, it is shown that the rms temperature fluctuations of the thermal SZ effect could be underestimated by as much as 30% at an observing frequency of 30 GHz at l>1000. The effect is larger at higher multipoles. If the recent report of excess power at small angular scales is to be explained by the thermal SZ effect, then radio point sources at an observing frequency of 30 GHz must be a surprisingly weak contaminant of the SZ effect for low-mass clusters.