The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect and Large-Scale Structure
  The thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect is the inverse-Compton scattering
of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons off hot, ionized electrons,
primarily located in galaxy groups and clusters. Recent years have seen immense
improvement in our ability to probe cosmology and the astrophysics of the
intracluster medium using the tSZ signal. Here, I describe cross-correlations
of the tSZ effect measured in Planck data with gravitational lensing maps from
Planck and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey, as well as
hydrodynamical simulations which show that such measurements do not probe
"missing baryons," but rather the pressure of ionized gas in groups and
clusters over a wide range of halo masses and redshifts. I also present recent
measurements of higher-order tSZ statistics using data from the Atacama
Cosmology Telescope, which yield strong constraints on the amplitude of density
fluctuations. I describe stacking analyses of tSZ data from Planck, focusing on
the behavior of the gas pressure in low-mass galaxy groups. I close with a
prediction for the tSZ monopole, including relativistic corrections, which is
the largest guaranteed spectral distortion signal for the proposed Primordial
Inflation Explorer mission. The tSZ monopole will yield a direct measurement of
the total thermal energy in ionized electrons in the observable universe.
