The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A search for late-time anisotropic screening of the Cosmic Microwave Background

Since the formation of the first stars, most of the gas in the Universe has been ionized. Spatial variations in the density of this ionized gas generate cosmic microwave background anisotropies via Thomson scattering, a process known as the ``anisotropic screening'' effect. We propose and implement for the first time a new estimator to cross-correlate unWISE galaxies and anisotropic screening, as measured by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and Planck satellite. We do not significantly detect the effect; the null hypothesis is consistent with the data at 1.7 $\sigma$ (resp. 0.016 $\sigma$) for the blue (resp. green) unWISE sample. We obtain an upper limit on the integrated optical depth within a 6 arcmin disk to be $\bar{\tau}< 0.033$ arcmin$^2$ at 95\% confidence for the blue sample and $\bar{\tau}< 0.057$ arcmin$^2$ for the green sample. Future measurements with Simons Observatory and CMB-S4 should detect this effect significantly. Complementary to the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, this probe of the gas distribution around halos will inform models of feedback in galaxy formation and baryonic effects in galaxy lensing.