Weak-Lensing Mass Reconstruction of the Interacting Cluster 1E 0657–558: Direct Evidence for the Existence of Dark Matter

By D. Clowe, Anthony H. Gonzalez, M. Markevitch. 2003

628 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a weak-lensing mass reconstruction of the interacting cluster 1E 0657-558, in which we detect both the main cluster and a subcluster. The subcluster is identified as a smaller cluster that has just undergone initial infall and pass-through of the primary cluster and has been previously identified in both optical surveys and X-ray studies. The X-ray gas has been separated from the galaxies by ram pressure-stripping during the pass-through. The detected mass peak is located between the X-ray peak and galaxy concentration, although the position is consistent with the galaxy centroid within the errors of the mass reconstruction. We find that the mass peak for the main cluster is in good spatial agreement with the cluster galaxies and is offset from the X-ray halo at 3.4 σ significance, and we determine that the mass-to-light ratios of the two components are consistent with those of relaxed clusters. The observed offsets of the lensing mass peaks from the peaks of the dominant visible mass component (the X-ray gas) directly demonstrate the presence, and dominance, of dark matter in this cluster. This proof of dark matter existence holds true even under the assumption of modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND); based on the observed gravitational shear-optical light ratios and the mass peak-X-ray gas offsets, the dark matter component in a MOND regime would have a total mass that is at least equal to the baryonic mass of the system.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1bb07bbe1316cd0a27bd87b777270db4b2832431

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Citations in the corpus

The speed of the ‘bullet’ in the merging galaxy cluster 1E0657−56 (2007, background): “While this is broadly consistent with the results from weakand strong lensing analysis of 1E0657–56 (Clowe et al. 2004, 2006; Bradǎc et al. 2006), the size of the offset in this simulation is clearly smaller than inferred observationally.”
A Direct Empirical Proof of the Existence of Dark Matter (2006, methodology): “′′5 north of the subcluster’s brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) and detected at 8σ significance (as compared to 3σ in (Clowe et al. 2004)), and one centered 2.”
Weighing simulated galaxy clusters using lensing and X-ray (2009, background): “Clowe et al. (2004) have studied the weak lensing signal of our same clusters (but in a pure dark matter version) in their cosmological environment.”
Discovery of a Ringlike Dark Matter Structure in the Core of the Galaxy Cluster Cl 0024+17 (2007, background): “Direct Evidence of Dark Matter and Prospects of Constraining Dark Matter Particle Cross Section Clowe et al. (2004) detected significant dark matter centroid offsets with respect to the ICM centroids in 1E 0657 56 from a ground-based weak-lensing analysis.”
THE ATACAMA COSMOLOGY TELESCOPE: ACT-CL J0102−4915 “EL GORDO,” A MASSIVE MERGING CLUSTER AT REDSHIFT 0.87 (2011, methodology): “…of ACT-CL J0102−4915 motivates our search for a spatial offset between the galaxies (that should primarily trace the dark matter distribution) and the X-ray gas in a cluster subcomponent as seen in, for example, 1E 0657−558 (Clowe et al. 2004), MS 1054−0321 (Jeltema et al. 2001), and MACS J0025.”
Dark matter direct detection signals inferred from a cosmological N-body simulation with baryons (2009, background): “r ariousv observations from galactic to cosmological scales. Flat rotation curves in spiral galaxies [1, 2], velocity dispersions in galaxy clusters [3, 4], gravitational lensing mass reconstructions [5, 6, 7], hierarchical patterns in large scale structures [8, 9] and cosmic microwave background an”
Gravitational lensing (2010, background): “A particularly interesting case is the cluster 1E 0657-558, called the bullet cluster, whose x-ray emission appears in between two galaxy concentrations and dark-matter distributions recovered from weak lensing [80, 82], see figure 13.”
Masses of Galaxy Clusters from Gravitational Lensing (2013, background): “…which an infalling cluster has already passed through the core of the more massive component almost in the plane of the sky, was the first in which a significant separation between the X-ray and weak lensing mass peaks of both subclusters was discovered (Clowe et al. 2004b; Markevitch et al. 2004).”
Constraints on the Self-Interaction Cross Section of Dark Matter from Numerical Simulations of the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657–56 (2007, methodology): “Using the latest lensing mass map from B06, we rederived M /L ratios for each of the two subclusters within a projected 150 kpc of the total mass peaks (for previous results, see Clowe et al. 2004).”
LENS MODELS AND MAGNIFICATION MAPS OF THE SIX HUBBLE FRONTIER FIELDS CLUSTERS (2014, background): “This elongation is common in merging clusters and makes them power- ful lenses for magnifying background galaxies (e.g., the Bullet Cluster, Clowe et al. (2006, 2004); MACSJ0025.”