The Integrated Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect as a Superior Method for Measuring the Mass of Clusters of Galaxies

By P. Motl, E. Hallman, Jack O. Burns, Michael L. Norman. 2005

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We investigate empirical scaling relations between the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) and cluster mass in simulated clusters of galaxies. The simulated clusters have been compiled from four different samples that differ only in their assumed baryonic physics. We show that the strength of the thermal SZE integrated over a significant fraction of the virialized region of the clusters is relatively insensitive to the detailed heating and cooling processes in the cores of clusters, by demonstrating that the derived scaling relations are nearly identical among the four cluster samples considered. For our synthetic images, the central Comptonization parameter shows significant boosting during transient merging events, but the integrated SZE appears to be relatively insensitive to these events. Most importantly, the integrated SZE closely tracks the underlying cluster mass. Observations through the thermal SZE allow a strikingly accurate mass estimation from relatively simple measurements that do not require either parametric modeling or geometric deprojection and thus avoid assumptions regarding the physics of the intracluster medium or the symmetry of the cluster. This result offers significant promise for precision cosmology using clusters of galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/21e0c3b42f21a6ca1cb305b2a7738fe42390fe34

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Citations in the corpus

Planck 2013 results. XX. Cosmology from Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster counts (2013, background): “III 2013) and from numerical simulations (Springel et al. 2001; da Silva et al. 2004; Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2006; Kay et al. 2012) suggests that the SZ effect is an excellent mass proxy.”
A WEAK LENSING STUDY OF X-RAY GROUPS IN THE COSMOS SURVEY: FORM AND EVOLUTION OF THE MASS–LUMINOSITY RELATION (2009, background): “…property of being redshift independent, and the integrated SZ flux increment, Y, may be less sensitive to the baryon physics of cluster cores (Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2006) but mass measurements with the SZ effect face other challenges such as the identification and removal of radio…”
Formation of Galaxy Clusters (2012, background): “…also exhibits a comparably low–scatter and the slope and evolution of normalization are close to the predictions of the self–similar model (da Silva et al. 2004, Motl et al. 2005), which is not surprising given the similarity between theYX and the integratedYSZ measured from SZ observations.”
A SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH-SELECTED SAMPLE OF THE MOST MASSIVE GALAXY CLUSTERS IN THE 2500 deg2 SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE SURVEY (2011, background): “The integrated SZ flux, Y , is expected to be a tight proxy for the cluster mass (Barbosa et al. 1996; Holder & Carlstrom 2001; Motl et al. 2005; Nagai et al. 2007; Shaw et al. 2008; Stanek et al. 2009).”
The universal galaxy cluster pressure profile from a representative sample of nearby systems (REXCESS) and the Y-SZ-M-500 relation (2009, background): “…to the depth of the gravitational potential,YSZD2A is expected to be closely related to the mass. Numerical simulations (e.g., da Silva et al. 2004; Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2006; Bonaldi et al. 2007) and analytical models (Reid & Spergel 2006) of cluster formation indicate that the intrinsic…”
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS FROM GALAXY CLUSTERS IN THE 2500 SQUARE-DEGREE SPT-SZ SURVEY (2016, methodology): “Estimated from tSZ or X-ray data, integrated cluster pressure is predicted and measured to track cluster mass with low scatter (e.g., Motl et al. 2005; Nagai et al. 2007; Stanek et al. 2010; Kravtsov et al. 2006), but its relation to true cluster mass can be complicated by non-thermal pressure…”
CHANDRA CLUSTER COSMOLOGY PROJECT. II. SAMPLES AND X-RAY DATA REDUCTION (2008, background): “The total thermal energy, Y, was found in the simulations to be a very good indicator of the total cluster mass (da Silva et al. 2004; Motl et al. 2005; Hallman et al. 2006; Nagai 2006).”
MASSIVE HALOS IN MILLENNIUM GAS SIMULATIONS: MULTIVARIATE SCALING RELATIONS (2009, result): “The small intrinsic scatter is consistent with results from previous simulations (Evrard et al. 1990; da Silva et al. 2000; Kay et al. 2004; Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2006; Kravtsov et al. 2006; Hallman et al. 2007).”
GALAXY CLUSTERS DISCOVERED WITH A SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT SURVEY (2008, background): “The amplitude of the SZ spectral distortion is proportional to the integrated pressure along the line of sight through the cluster, and the relationship between integrated SZ flux and cluster mass is expected to have relatively low scatter (Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2006; Shaw et al. 2008).”
GALAXY CLUSTERS SELECTED WITH THE SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT FROM 2008 SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS (2010, background): “The SZ flux is thus expected to be a robust proxy for total cluster mass (Barbosa et al. 1996; Holder & Carlstrom 2001; Motl et al. 2005).”
The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Sunyaev-Zel'dovich selected galaxy clusters at 148 GHz from three seasons of data (2013, background): “…Based Amplitude Analysis Scaling relations between cluster mass and cluster SZ signal strength are often expressed in terms of bulk integrated Compton quantities, such as Y500, which are expected to be correlated to mass with low intrinsic scatter (e.g., Motl et al. 2005; Reid & Spergel 2006).”
GALAXY CLUSTERS DISCOVERED VIA THE SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT IN THE 2500-SQUARE-DEGREE SPT-SZ SURVEY (2014, background): “The surface brightness of the thermal SZ effect is independent of redshift, and the integrated thermal SZ signal is expected to be a low-scatter proxy for the cluster mass, as it is proportional to the total thermal energy of the ICM (Motl et al. 2005).”
Toward a Halo Mass Function for Precision Cosmology: The Limits of Universality (2008, background): “…correlations between X-ray, SZ, and optical observables and cluster mass are expected theoretically (e.g., Bialek et al. 2001; da Silva et al. 2004; Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2006; Kravtsov et al. 2006) and were shown to exist observationally (e.g., Mohr et al. 1999; Lin et al. 2004; Vikhlinin et…”
Calibration of the galaxy cluster M-500-Υ-x relation with XMM-Newton (2007, result): “…that, as compared toTX or Mg,500, YX is a better mass proxy, in the sense that the intrinsic scatter was lower than for any other mass indicator, regardless of cluster dynamical state (similar to previous results for theM–YSZ relation, e.g., da Silva et al. 2004; Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2006).”
THE ATACAMA COSMOLOGY TELESCOPE: COSMOLOGY FROM GALAXY CLUSTERS DETECTED VIA THE SUNYAEV–ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT (2010, methodology): “The integration for thisY value is performed over a radius tied to the size of the cluster, and aY defined this way would be a preferable quantity to use, having lower scatter with mass in theory (e.g., da Silva et al. 2004; Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2006; Reid & Spergel 2006; Bonaldi et al. 2007).”
Catalog extraction in SZ cluster surveys : a matched filter approach (2006, methodology): “As mentioned, we expect the intrinsic (or true) flux to tightly correlate with cluster mass (Bartlett 2001), as indeed borne out by numerical simulations (da Silva et al. 2004; Motl et al. 2005; Nagai 2005).”
GALAXY CLUSTERS DISCOVERED VIA THE SUNYAEV–ZEL’DOVICH EFFECT IN THE FIRST 720 SQUARE DEGREES OF THE SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE SURVEY (2012, background): “Therefore, the integrated thermal SZ (tSZ) flux is a direct measure of the total thermal energy of the ICM, and the SZ flux is thus expected to be a robust proxy for total cluster mass (Barbosa et al. 1996; Holder & Carlstrom 2001; Motl et al. 2005).”