Tracing cosmic evolution with clusters of galaxies

By G. Mark Voit. 2004

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The most successful cosmological models to date envision structure formation as a hierarchical process in which gravity is constantly drawing lumps of matter together to form increasingly larger structures. Clusters of galaxies currently sit atop this hierarchy as the largest objects that have had time to collapse under the influence of their own gravity. Thus their appearance on the cosmic scene is also relatively recent. Two features of clusters make them uniquely useful tracers of cosmic evolution. First, clusters are the biggest things whose masses we can reliably measure because they are the largest objects to have undergone gravitational relaxation and entered into virial equilibrium. Mass measurements of nearby clusters can therefore be used to determine the amount of structure in the universe on scales of ${10}^{14}\char21{}{10}^{15}{M}_{\astrosun{}}$, and comparisons of the present-day cluster mass distribution with the mass distribution at earlier times can be used to measure the rate of structure formation, placing important constraints on cosmological models. Second, clusters are essentially ``closed boxes'' that retain all their gaseous matter, despite the enormous energy input associated with supernovae and active galactic nuclei, because the gravitational potential wells of clusters are so deep. The baryonic component of clusters therefore contains a wealth of information about the processes associated with galaxy formation, including the efficiency with which baryons are converted into stars and the effects of the resulting feedback processes on galaxy formation. This article reviews our theoretical understanding of both the dark-matter component and the baryonic component of clusters, providing a context for interpreting the flood of new cluster observations that are now arriving from the latest generation of x-ray observatories, large optical surveys, and measurements of cluster-induced distortions in the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/00a5372f76ed5cd6795ca294ced1916063f15ed0

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Citations in the corpus

An Entropy Threshold for Strong Hα and Radio Emission in the Cores of Galaxy Clusters (2008, background): “…observational work (see Donahue et al. 2005, 2006; Cavagnolo et al. 2008a), we have focused on ICM entropy as a means for understanding the cooling and heating processes in clusters because it is a more fundamental property of the ICM than temperature or density alone (Voit et al. 2002; Voit 2005).”
Simulating the Universe with MICE: The abundance of massive clusters (2009, background): “In turn, the general idea of defining virialized structure and mass in terms of spherical apertures is more directly linked to observations of galaxy groups and clusters (e.g. Voit 2005), in part because the scaling correlations between cluster observable and mass are tighter in this approach.”
The MCXC: a meta-catalogue of x-ray detected clusters of galaxies (2010, background): “Moreover, the physical properties of clusters provide a test of the structure formation scenario, giving vital information both for understandingthe gravitational collapse of the dark matter and for the evoluti n of baryons in the dark matter potential (see Voit 2005, for a review).”
ERRATUM: “CHANDRA SAMPLE OF NEARBY RELAXED GALAXY CLUSTERS: MASS, GAS FRACTION, AND MASS–TEMPERATURE RELATION” (2006, ApJ, 640, 691) (2005, methodology): “The mass distribution in dynamically relaxed clusters can be reconstructed using several approaches, of which the X-ray method is one of themostwidely used (a recent review of themass determination techniques can be found, e.g., in Voit 2005).”
LoCuSS: comparison of observed X-ray and lensing galaxy cluster scaling relations with simulations (2008, methodology): “C are only available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org galaxy cluster samples using reliable mass measurements (e.g. Reiprich & Böhringer 2002; Voit 2005; Stanek et al. 2006).”
Planck 2013 results. XX. Cosmology from Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster counts (2013, background): “The study of these galaxy clusters has played a significant role in the development of cosmology over many years (see, for example, Perrenod 1980; Oukbir & Blanchard 1992; White et al. 1993; Carlberg et al. 1996; Voit 2005; Henry et al. 2009; Vikhlinin et al. 2009b; Allen et al. 2011a).”
X-ray coronae in simulations of disc galaxy formation (2010, background): “Entropy therefore maintains a record of the thermodynamic history of the gas (e.g. Voit et al. 2003; Voit 2005).”
Spherical collapse in quintessence models with zero speed of sound (2009, neutral): “review on cluster detection tecniques see [51]).”
Systematics in the X-ray cluster mass estimators (2006, background): “…yr (since Zwicky 1933) to infer the presence of dark matter (DM) over Mpc scales and to constrain the cosmological parameters that describe the distribution and growth of the cosmic density fluctuations of >1014 M virialized structures (see the reviews by Rosati, Borgani & Norman 2002; Voit 2005).”
Gas expulsion by quasar-driven winds as a solution to the overcooling problem in galaxy groups and clusters (2010, methodology): “The entropy1 of the IGrM is perhaps the best tool for studying the impact of non-gravitational physics, since it maintains a record of the thermal history of the gas (see Voit et al. 2003; Voit 2005 for further discussion).”
ON THE CLUSTER PHYSICS OF SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH AND X-RAY SURVEYS. I. THE INFLUENCE OF FEEDBACK, NON-THERMAL PRESSURE, AND CLUSTER SHAPES ON Y–M SCALING RELATIONS (2011, background): “As shown by subsequent X-ray observations, this self-similardescription is broken, especially on group scales; low-mass sy - tems are less luminous in comparison to the self-similar expectation (see Voit 2005, for a review).”
X-ray spectroscopy of galaxy clusters: studying astrophysical processes in the largest celestial laboratories (2009, background): “(10) This definition is related to the general definition of entropy, s, by s = kB ln ( S 3/2(µmp)5/2 ) + s0 (Voit 2005).”
A High-Resolution Survey of Low-Redshift QSO Absorption Lines: Statistics and Physical Conditions of O VI Absorbers (2007, background): “Second, it is becoming increasingly evident that the processes that add or remove gas and energy from galaxies play an important role in galaxy evolution (e.g., Keres et al. 2005; Veilleux et al. 2005; Voit 2005).”
Formation of Galaxy Clusters (2012, positive): “In this regime, clusters’ observational properties exhibit strong deviations from the self–similar scalings described in Section 3.9 (see also Voit 2005).”
CHANDRA STUDIES OF THE X-RAY GAS PROPERTIES OF GALAXY GROUPS (2008, methodology): “Voit (2005) showed that the smooth accretion can generate ∼ 50% more entropy throughout the cluster than would lumpy hierarchical accretion.”
Planck intermediate results: V. Pressure profiles of galaxy clusters from the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (2012, positive): “…and the ensuing similarity yields both a universal dark matter distribution and simple global scaling relations that should describe the entire halo population (Bertschinger 1985; Kaiser et al. 1995; Navarro et al. 1995; Evrard et al. 1996; Navarro et al. 1997; Voit 2005; Arnaud et al. 2005).”
ON THE ACCURACY OF WEAK-LENSING CLUSTER MASS RECONSTRUCTIONS (2010, background): “The power in this cosmological test arises from the sensitivity of the abundance of galaxy clusters to both the geometry of the universe and the growth of structure Holder et al. (e.g., 2001); Haiman et al. (e.g., 2001, see Voit 2005 for a recent review).”
Towards a realistic population of simulated galaxy groups and clusters (2013, background): “It is widely recognized that galaxy clusters are powerful tools for probing cosmology as well as the non-gravitational physics of galaxy formation (for recent reviews, see Voit 2005; Borgani & Kravtsov 2011; Allen, Evrard & Mantz 2011; Kravtsov & Borgani 2012; Weinberg et al. 2013).”
The XMM Cluster Survey:Optical analysis methodology and the first data release (2011, background): “Clusters of galaxies provide an opportunity to explore the underlying cosmological model and the processes governing structure formation (see Voit 2005; Allen et al. 2011 for reviews) and so several large-area surveys for clusters are currently underway.”