B-modes from galaxy cluster alignments in future surveys

Intrinsic alignment (IA) of source galaxies represents an important contaminant for upcoming cosmic shear surveys. In particular, it is expected on general grounds that IA contains a B-mode while the weak lensing signal does not. Thus, a detection of B-modes offers the possibility to study directly the IA signal of the sources. Galaxy clusters exhibit strong IA and are therefore a natural candidate to look for a B-mode signal. We forecast the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for B-modes from IA of galaxy clusters in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). We use a perturbative model for the IA multipoles based on the Effective Field Theory of Intrinsic Alignments (EFT of IA), which has recently been validated against N-body simulations. For LSST, we forecast SNR $\approx 12$. We find that this detectability is not significantly impacted by different analysis choices. Lastly, we also apply our forecast to clusters in the SDSS redMaPPer and DESY1 samples, finding SNR $\approx 5$ and SNR $\approx 3$, respectively. This implies that a detection may already be within reach of current cluster samples.