Paper pool¶

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Bias from gas inhomogeneities in the pressure profiles as measured from X-ray and SZ observations¶

S. Khedekar, E. Churazov, A. Kravtsov, I. Zhuravleva, E. T. Lau, D. Nagai, R. Sunyaev
(Submitted on 14 Nov 2012)
X-ray observations of galaxy clusters provide emission measure weighted spectra, arising from a range of density and temperature fluctuations in the intra-cluster medium (ICM). This is fitted to a single temperature plasma emission model to provide an estimate of the gas density and temperature, which are sensitive to the gas inhomogeneities. Therefore, X-ray observations yield a potentially biased estimate of the thermal gas pressure, P_X. At the same time Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) observations directly measure the integrated gas pressure, P_SZ. If the X-ray pressure profiles are strongly biased with respect to to the SZ, then one has the possibility to probe the gas inhomogeneities, even at scales unresolved by the current generation of telescopes. At the same time, a weak bias has implications for the use of mass proxies like Y_SZ and Y_X as cosmological probes. In this paper we investigate the dependence of the bias, P_X(r)/P_SZ(r)-1, on the characteristics of fluctuations in the ICM taking into account the correlation between temperature and density fluctuations. We made a simple prediction of the irreducible bias in idealised X-ray vs SZ observations using multi-temperature plasma emission model. We also provide a simple fitting form to estimate the bias given the distribution of fluctuations. Analysing a sample of 16 simulated clusters extracted from hydrodynamical simulations, we find that the median value of bias is within +/-3% within R_500, it decreases to - 5% at R_500 < r < 1.5R_500 and then rises back to ~0% at > 2R_500. The scatter of b_P(r) between individual relaxed clusters is small -- at the level of <0.03 within R_500, but turns significantly larger (0.25) and highly skewed at r > 1.5 R_500. Unrelaxed clusters display larger scatter (both from radius to radius and from cluster to cluster). Nevertheless, the bias remains within +/-20% within 0.8R_500 for all clusters.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.3358

Votes: 1

Quenching star formation in cluster galaxies¶

Dan S. Taranu, Michael J. Hudson, Michael L. Balogh, Russell J. Smith, Chris Power, Brad Krane
(Submitted on 14 Nov 2012)
In order to understand the processes that quench star formation within rich clusters, we construct a library of subhalo orbits drawn from lambdaCDM cosmological N-body simulations of four rich clusters. The orbits are combined with models of star formation followed by quenching in the cluster environment to predict colours and spectroscopic line indices of satellite galaxies. Simple models with only halo mass-dependent quenching and without environmental (i.e. cluster-dependent) quenching fail to reproduce the observed cluster-centric colour and absorption linestrength gradients. Models in which star formation is instantly quenched at the virial radius also fail to match the observations. Better matches to the data are achieved by more complicated bulge-disc models in which the bulge stellar populations depend only on the galaxy subhalo mass while the disc quenching depends on the cluster environment. In the most successful models quenching begins at pericentre, operating on an exponential timescale of 2 -- 3 Gyr, with the shorter timescale being a better match to disc colours as a function of cluster-centric radius and the longer being a better fit to the radial dependence of stellar absorption line indices. The models thus imply that the environments of rich clusters must impact star formation rates of infalling galaxies on relatively long timescales - several times longer than a typical halo spends within the virial radius of a cluster. This scenario favours gentler quenching mechanisms such as slow "strangulation" over more rapid ram-pressure stripping.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.3411

Votes: 0

Sunyaev-Zel'dovich-Measured Pressure Profiles from the Bolocam X-ray/SZ Galaxy Cluster Sample¶

Jack Sayers, Nicole G. Czakon, Adam Mantz, Sunil R. Golwala, Silvia Ameglio, Tom P. Downes, Patrick M. Koch, Kai-Yang Lin, Ben J. Maughan, Sandor M. Molnar, Leonidas Moustakas, Tony Mroczkowski, Elena Pierpaoli, Jennifer A. Shitanishi, Seth Siegel, Keiichi Umetsu, Nina Van der Pyl
(Submitted on 7 Nov 2012)
We describe Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect measurements and analysis of the intracluster medium (ICM) pressure profiles of a set of 45 massive galaxy clusters imaged using Bolocam at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. We have used masses determined from Chandra X-ray observations to scale each cluster's profile by the overdensity radius R500 and the mass-and-redshift-dependent normalization factor P500. We deproject the average pressure profile of our sample into 13 logarithmically spaced radial bins between 0.07R500 and 3.5R500. We find that a generalized Navarro, Frenk, and White (gNFW) profile describes our data with sufficient goodness-of-fit and best-fit parameters (C500, alpha, beta, gamma, P0 = 1.18, 0.86, 3.67, 0.67, 4.29). We also use the X-ray data to define cool-core and disturbed subsamples of clusters, and we constrain the average pressure profiles of each of these subsamples. We find that given the precision of our data the average pressure profiles of disturbed and cool-core clusters are consistent with one another at R>~0.15R500, with cool-core systems showing indications of higher pressure at R<~0.15R500. In addition, for the first time, we place simultaneous constraints on the mass scaling of cluster pressure profiles, their ensemble mean profile, and their radius-dependent intrinsic scatter between 0.1R500 and 2.0R500. The scatter among profiles is minimized at radii between ~0.2R500 and ~0.5R500, with a value of ~20%. The best-fit mass scaling has a power-law slope of 0.49, which is shallower than the nominal prediction of 2/3 from self-similar hydrostatic equilibrium models. These results for the intrinsic scatter and mass scaling are largely consistent with previous analyses, most of which have relied heavily on X-ray derived pressures of clusters at significantly lower masses and redshifts compared to our sample.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.1632

Votes: 0

The Sloan Bright Arcs Survey: Ten Strong Gravitational Lensing Clusters and Evidence of Overconcentration¶

Matthew P. Wiesner, Huan Lin, Sahar S. Allam, James Annis, Elizabeth J. Buckley-Geer, H. Thomas Diehl, Donna Kubik, Jeffrey M. Kubo, Douglas Tucker
(Submitted on 6 Nov 2012)
We describe ten strong lensing galaxy clusters of redshift 0.26-0.56 that were found in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We present measurements of richness, mass and velocity dispersion for the clusters. We find that in order to use the mass-richness relation from Johnston et al. (2007), which was established at mean redshift of 0.25, it is necessary to scale measured richness values up by 1.47. We also present measurements of Einstein radius, mass and velocity dispersion for the lensing systems. The Einstein radii are all relatively small, between 5.4-13 arcseconds. Finally we consider if there is evidence that our clusters are more concentrated than standard cosmology would predict. We find that six of our clusters do not show evidence of overconcentration, while four of our clusters do. We note a correlation between overconcentration and mass, as the four clusters showing evidence of overconcentration are all lower-mass clusters.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.1421

Votes: 0

A low-scatter survey-based mass proxy for clusters of galaxies¶

S. Andreon (INAF-OABrera)
(Submitted on 5 Nov 2012)
Estimates of cosmological parameters using galaxy clusters have the scatter in the observable at a given mass as a fundamental parameter. This work computes the amplitude of the scatter for a newly introduced mass proxy, the product of the cluster total luminosity times the mass-to-light ratio, usually referred as stellar mass. The analysis of 12 galaxy clusters with excellent total masses shows a tight correlation between the stellar mass, or stellar fraction, and total mass within r500 with negligible intrinsic scatter: the 90% upper limit is 0.06 dex, the posterior mean is 0.027 dex. This scatter is similar to the one of best-determined mass proxies, such as Yx, i.e. the product of X-ray temperature and gas mass. The size of the cluster sample used to determine the intrinsic scatter is small, as in previous works proposing low-scatter proxies because very accurate masses are needed to infer very small values of intrinsic scatter. Three-quarters of the studied clusters have lgM <~14 Msol, which is advantageous from a cosmological perspective because these clusters are far more abundant than more massive clusters. At the difference of other mass proxies such as Yx, stellar mass can be determined with survey data up to at least z=0.9 using upcoming optical near-infrared surveys, such as DES and Euclid, or even with currently available surveys, covering however smaller solid angles. On the other end, the uncertainty about the predicted mass of a single cluster is large, 0.21 to 0.32 dex, depending on cluster richness. This is largely because the proxy itself has _{0.10 dex errors for clusters of lgM<} 14 Msol mass.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.0790

Votes: 1

Notes

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