Weighing the Giants - I. Weak-lensing masses for 51 massive galaxy clusters: project overview, data analysis methods and cluster images

By A. V. D. Linden, M. Allen, D. Applegate, P. Kelly, S. Allen, H. Ebeling, P. Burchat, David L. Burke, D. Donovan, R. Morris and 7 more. 2012

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This is the first in a series of papers in which we measure accurate weak-lensing masses for 51 of the most X-ray luminous galaxy clusters known at redshifts 0:15 . zCl . 0:7, in order to calibrate X-ray and other mass proxies for cosmological cluster experiments. The primary aim is to improve the absolute mass calibration of cluster observables, currently the dominant systematic uncertainty for cluster count experiments. Key elements of this work are the rigorous quantification of systematic uncertainties, high quality data reduction and photometric calibration, and the “blind” nature of the analysis to avoid confirmation bias. Our target clusters are drawn from X-ray catalogs based on the ROSAT All-Sky Survey, and provide a versatile calibration sample for many aspects of cluster cosmology. We have acquired widefield, high-quality imaging using the Subaru and CFHT telescopes for all 51 clusters, in at least three bands per cluster. For a subset of 27 clusters, we have data in at least five bands, allowing accurate photometric redshift estimates of lensed galaxies. In this paper, we describe the cluster sample and observations, and detail the processing of the SuprimeCam data to yield high-quality images suitable for robust weak-lensing shape measurements and precision photometry. For each cluster, we present wide-field three-color optical images and maps of the weak-lensing mass distribution, the optical light distribution, and the X-ray emission. These provide insights into the large-scale structure in which the clusters are embedded. We measure the o sets between X-ray flux centroids and the Brightest Cluster Galaxies in the clusters, finding these to be small in general, with a median of 20 kpc. For o sets . 100 kpc, weak-lensing mass measurements centered on the Brightest Cluster Galaxies agree well with values determined relative to the X-ray centroids; miscentering is therefore not a significant source of systematic uncertainty for our weak-lensing mass measurements. In accompanying papers we discuss the key aspects of our photometric calibration and photometric redshift measurements (Kelly et al.), and measure cluster masses using two methods, including a novel Bayesian weak-lensing approach that makes full use of the photometric redshift probability distributions for individual background galaxies (Applegate et al.). In subsequent papers, we will incorporate these weak-lensing mass measurements into a self-consistent framework to simultaneously determine cluster scaling relations and cosmological parameters.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/943a80231b0a6ea8f576e09a6adba31acbe69228

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Citations in the corpus

Weak Lensing Measurement of the Mass--Richness Relation of SDSS redMaPPer Clusters (2016, background): “…(e.g. Brainerd et al. 1996), groups (e.g. Leauthaud et al. 2010) and galaxy clusters (e.g. Sheldon et al. 2004a; Johnston et al. 2007a; von der Linden et al. 2014; Hoekstra et al. 2015; Okabe & Smith 2015; van Uitert et al. 2016), as well as the large-scale distribution of matter through the…”
The Canadian Cluster Comparison Project: detailed study of systematics and updated weak lensing masses (2015, methodology): “The slope is similar to that found by von der Linden et al. (2014b) and our results therefore support their conclusion that the bias in the hydrostatic masses used by Planck depends on the cluster mass, but our normalization is 9 per cent higher.”
Gravitational probes of dark matter physics (2017, background): “ass function correctly depends on a faithful mapping between cluster masses measured in simulation and observation. There is enormous eort in this direction in the dark energy community (e.g., Refs. [541, 542, 543]); the dark matter community will benet from this work, as the cluster mass function i”
Cluster Cosmology Constraints from the 2500 deg2 SPT-SZ Survey: Inclusion of Weak Gravitational Lensing Data from Magellan and the Hubble Space Telescope (2018, methodology): “In dH16, the amplitude of the observable–mass relation was set by a prior on the X-ray normalization AYX, which in turn was informed by external WL data sets (CCCP and WtG; Applegate et al. 2014; von der Linden et al. 2014; Hoekstra et al. 2015).”
H0LiCOW – I. H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's wellspring: program overview (2016, methodology): “A crucial aspect of our program is the use of blind analysis (e.g., Conley et al. 2006; Suzuki et al. 2012; Suyu et al. 2013; von der Linden et al. 2014) to test for residual systematics and avoid subconscious experimenter bias.”
CLASH: WEAK-LENSING SHEAR-AND-MAGNIFICATION ANALYSIS OF 20 GALAXY CLUSTERS (2014, methodology): “A good fraction of the Subaru data were taken as part of the Weighing the Giants (WtG) project, and were independently analyzed in their series of papers (von der Linden et al. 2014; Kelly et al. 2014; Applegate et al. 2014).”
Planck 2013 results. XX. Cosmology from Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster counts (2013, background): “Most recent work points to relatively good agreement between X-ray and WL masses, with MHE/MWL ' 0.9 on average, and MHE/MWL ' 1 for relaxed systems (Mahdavi et al. 2013; von der Linden et al. 2014).”
Robust weak-lensing mass calibration of Planck galaxy clusters (2014, methodology): “In this letter, we investigate the reliability of the Planck cluster mass measurements by comparing them with robust, independently derived weak-lensing mass measurements from the Weighing the Giants (WtG) project (von der Linden et al. 2014; Kelly et al. 2014; Applegate et al. 2014).”
Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: weak lensing mass calibration of redMaPPer galaxy clusters (2018, background): “…in a broad range of weak lensing experiments specifically designed to calibrate the masses of galaxy clusters (Applegate et al. 2014; von der Linden et al. 2014a,b; Hoekstra et al. 2015; Mantz et al. 2015b; Okabe & Smith 2016; Dietrich et al. 2017; Melchior et al. 2017; Simet et al. 2017;…”
Weighing the giants – IV. Cosmology and neutrino mass (2014, methodology): “However, von der Linden et al. (2014b) have shown that the mass calibration used by the Planck team is biased low compared with the WtG lensing measurements.”
RELICS: Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (2019, methodology): “…et al. 2010; MCXC Piffaretti et al. 2011); weak lensing mass estimates (Sereno 2015 compilation including Weighing the Giants Applegate et al. 2014, von der Linden et al. 2014b; Umetsu et al. 2014; Hoekstra et al. 2015); SDSS clusters (Wong et al. 2013; Wen et al. 2012); and other SZ mass…”
CLASH: JOINT ANALYSIS OF STRONG-LENSING, WEAK-LENSING SHEAR, AND MAGNIFICATION DATA FOR 20 GALAXY CLUSTERS (2015, methodology): “The WtG Project The WtG collaboration conducted weak-lensing shear mass measurements for 51 X-ray-selected luminous clusters at 0.15 <∼ z <∼ 0.7 (z = 0.387) using deep multi-color Subaru/Suprime-Cam and CFHT/MegaPrime optical imaging (von der Linden et al. 2014b; Applegate et al. 2014).”
COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS FROM GALAXY CLUSTERS IN THE 2500 SQUARE-DEGREE SPT-SZ SURVEY (2016, methodology): “…scale of the sample from a reanalysis of Vikhlinin et al. (2009b) using the more recent weak lensing mass estimates from Hoekstra et al. (2015, denoted with H15) and the Weighing the Giants (WtG) project (Kelly et al. 2014; Applegate et al. 2014; von der Linden et al. 2014a; Mantz et al. 2015).”
The DES Science Verification weak lensing shear catalogues (2015, background): “This can take the form of a single constant bias correction applied to all galaxies (e.g. Schrabback et al. 2007), or it can vary according to galaxy properties such as the signal-to-noise ratio (Schrabback et al. 2010; Gruen et al. 2013) and size (von der Linden et al. 2014).”
Cosmology and astrophysics from relaxed galaxy clusters - II. Cosmological constraints (2014, background): “…from hydrodynamic simulations.2 Third, the availability of robust mass estimates for the target clusters from weak gravitational lensing (von der Linden et al. 2014; Kelly et al. 2014; Applegate et al. 2014, hereafter collectively Weighing the Giants, or WtG) allows us to directly calibrate any…”