Cosmic Microwave Background--Weak Lensing Correlation: Analytical and Numerical Study of Non-linearity and Implications for Dark Energy

Abstract

Non-linear evolution of density fluctuations yields secondary anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which are correlated with the same density fluctuations that can be measured by weak lensing (WL) surveys. We study the CMB-WL correlation using analytical models as well as $N$-body simulations. We show that an analytical model based upon the time derivative of non-linear matter power spectrum agrees with simulations. All-sky cosmic-variance limited CMB and WL surveys allow us to measure the correlation from non-linearity with high significance ($50σ$) for $l_{\rm max}=10^4$, whereas the forthcoming missions such as Planck and LSST are expected to yield only marginal detections. The CMB-WL correlation is sensitive to the time derivative of structure growth. We study how this property may be used to constrain the nature of dark energy. While the expected constraints are not very strong, they may provide a cross check of results from other observations.