Measurement of Galaxy Cluster Sizes, Radial Profiles, and Luminosity Functions from SDSS Photometric Data

By S. Hansen, T. McKay, Risa Wechsler, James Annis, Erin Sheldon, A. Kimball. 2004

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Imaging data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey are used to measure the empirical size-richness relation for a large sample of galaxy clusters. Using population subtraction methods, we determine the radius at which the cluster galaxy number density is 200Ωm-1 times the mean galaxy density, without assuming a model for the radial distribution of galaxies in clusters. If these galaxies are unbiased on megaparsec scales, this galaxy density-based R200 reflects the characteristic radii of clusters. We measure the scaling of this characteristic radius with richness over an order of magnitude in cluster richness, from rich clusters to poor groups. We use this information to examine the radial profiles of galaxies in clusters as a function of cluster richness, finding that the concentration of the galaxy distribution decreases with richness and is systematically lower than the concentrations measured for dark matter profiles in N-body simulations. Using these scaled radii, we investigate the behavior of the cluster luminosity function and find that it is well matched by a Schechter function for galaxies brighter than Mr = -18 only after the central galaxy has been removed. We find that the luminosity function varies with richness and with distance from the cluster center, underscoring the importance of using an aperture that scales with cluster mass to compare physically equivalent regions of these different systems. We note that the lowest richness systems in our catalog have properties consistent with those expected of the earliest forming halos; our cluster-finding algorithm, in addition to reliably finding clusters, may be efficient at finding fossil groups.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ffcda34b2badd39a5f66b694968dfaaa1cc93d16

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Citations in the corpus

Galaxy halo masses and satellite fractions from galaxy–galaxy lensing in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: stellar mass, luminosity, morphology and environment dependencies (2005, background): “…to an NFW profile with concentration parameter cg = cdm (Carlberg et al. 1997; Peacock & Smith 2000; Gao et al. 2004a), though the importance of this assumption – which may overestimate cg (Carlberg et al. 1997; Lin et al. 2004; Hansen et al. 2005; Nagai & Kravtsov 2005) – will be explored later.”
What determines satellite galaxy disruption (2009, methodology): “Here, we abundance match our subhalo catalog at z = 0.25 to the SDSS i-band galaxy luminosity function at that redshift (Sheldon et al. 2009), from which the cluster catalog in Hansen et al. (2009) is drawn.”
Modeling Luminosity-dependent Galaxy Clustering through Cosmic Time (2005, methodology): “Our luminosity assignment scheme can also be extended by separately modeling central and satellite galaxies, which appear to be two distinct populations with different origins and observable properties (Vale & Ostriker 2004; Cooray 2005a,b; Weinmann et al. 2005; Hansen et al. 2005).”
A Census of Baryons in Galaxy Clusters and Groups (2007, methodology): “As in Hansen et al. (2005), we use the Blanton et al. (2003) SDSS i−band luminosity function integrated over redshift to compute the field density (see Hansen et al. 2005).”
Combined strong and weak lensing analysis of 28 clusters from the Sloan Giant Arcs Survey (2011, background): “Measurements of the projected number density distributions suggest low concentration values of c ∼ 2 − 5 (Lin, Mohr, & Stanford 2004; Katgert et al. 2004; Hansen et al. 2005; Lin & Mohr 2007; Biviano & Poggianti 2009).”
Are Brightest Halo Galaxies Central Galaxies (2010, background): “Sev- c© 2009 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–17 eral studies that have measured nsat(r|M) using groups and clusters have assumed that the halo centre coincides with the location of the BHG (e.g., Carlberg, Yee & Ellingson 1997; Collister & Lahav 2005; Hansen et al. 2005; Yang et al. 2005b).”
THE GALAXY CONTENT OF SDSS CLUSTERS AND GROUPS (2007, methodology): “In Hansen et al. (2005) we explored the LFs of galaxies in clusters as a function of richness, and it was not clear that all satellite LFs within r200 were well described by a Schechter function, especially for the low-richness systems.”
DETECTION OF LENSING SUBSTRUCTURE USING ALMA OBSERVATIONS OF THE DUSTY GALAXY SDP.81 (2016, result): “Observational results for real galaxies are less clear: some are consistent with csubs/chost ' 1 (e.g., Guo et al. 2012; Yniguez et al. 2014), while others imply that galaxies are less concentrated (e.g., Hansen et al. 2005) than the total mass distribution in their hosts.”
A MaxBCG Catalog of 13,823 Galaxy Clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2007, methodology): “This R200 is determined using the relation between Ngal and R200 derived in Hansen et al. (2005).”
Towards a concordant model of halo occupation statistics (2006, background): “On the other hand, the analysis of the luminosity functions of clusters and groups by Hansen et al. (2005) suggests that on group-scales the r-band CLF is not well-fitted by a Schechter function (except when the brightest cluster galaxy is removed).”
ROBUST OPTICAL RICHNESS ESTIMATION WITH REDUCED SCATTER (2011, methodology): “Although galaxies will not necessarily follow the same distribution as that of dark matter, studies have shown that the number density of cluster galaxies can be described by an NFW function (e.g., Lin & Mohr 2004; Popesso et al. 2007; Hansen et al. 2005).”
redMaPPer. I. ALGORITHM AND SDSS DR8 CATALOG (2013, background): “In addition, it has been found to be a good description of the radial distribution of cluster galaxies (Lin & Mohr 2004; Hansen et al. 2005; Popesso et al. 2007).”