Pairwise Transverse Velocity Measurement with the Rees–Sciama Effect

We introduce a new estimator for the mean pairwise velocities of galaxy clusters, which is based on the measurement of the clusters' transverse velocity components. The Rees-Sciama (RS) effect offers an opportunity to measure transverse peculiar velocities through its distinct dipolar signature around the halo centers in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature map. We exploit this dipolar structure to extract the magnitude and direction of the transverse velocity vectors from CMB maps simulated with the expected characteristics of future surveys like CMB-S4. Although in the presence of lensed CMB and instrumental noise individual velocities are not reliably reconstructed, we demonstrate that the mean pairwise velocity measurement obtained using the estimator yields a signal-to-noise ratio of 5.2 for similar to 21,000 halos with M > 7 x 10(13) M-circle dot in a 40 x 40 [deg(2)] patch at z = 0.5. While the proposed estimator carries promising prospects for measuring pairwise velocities through the RS effect in CMB stage IV experiments, its applications extend to any other potential probe of transverse velocities.