The recent emergence of detections of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect through cross-correlation techniques is encouraging for the prospects of future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Extracting information on the large-scale velocity fields and constraining cosmological parameters from such kSZ measurements requires an understanding of the optical depth to CMB photons through halos. Using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations we find that there exists a low-scatter relation between the optical depth and thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) signal of halos within a physical aperture. We propose that such a relation can be used to break the degeneracy between optical depth and line-of-sight velocity in kSZ measurements. The limiting factors in our proposal are systematic uncertainties associated with the sub-grid physics models in the simulations, which we calculate to be less than 10 percent. We discuss future observational measurements that could potentially be used to mitigate the systematic uncertainties in this scaling relation.
We present hydrodynamical simulations of major mergers of galaxies and study the effects of winds produced by active galactic nuclei (AGN) on interstellar gas in the AGN's host galaxy. We consider winds with initial velocities ~ 10,000 km/s and an initial momentum (energy) flux of ~ tau_w L/c (~ 0.01 tau_w L), with tau_w ~ 1-10. The AGN wind sweeps up and shock heats the surrounding interstellar gas, leading to a galaxy-scale outflow with velocities ~ 1000 km/s, peak mass outflow rates comparable to the star formation rate, and a total ejected gas mass ~ 3 x 10^9 M_sun. Large momentum fluxes, …
In order to investigate possibilities to measure non-Gaussian signatures of the non-linear iSW effect, we study in this work the family of mixed bispectra <tau^q gamma^(3-q)> and trispectra <tau^q gamma^(4-q)> between the integrated Sachs-Wolfe (iSW) temperature perturbation tau and the galaxy over-density gamma. We use standard Eulerian perturbation theory restricted to tree level expansion for predicting the cosmic matter field. As expected, the spectra are found to decrease in amplitude with increasing q. The transition scale between linear domination and the scales, on which non-linearitie…
This pedagogical review of galaxy cluster simulations is based on three lectures given at the 2008 Enrico Fermi Summer School entitled "Astrophysics of Galaxy Clusters". It covers the standard cosmological framework, growth of perturbations in the linear regime, analytic models for nonlinear perturbation growth, statistics of galaxy cluster populations, virial scaling relations, overview of numerical methods, simulating gas in galaxy clusters, basic results on adiabatic clusters (Santa Barbara cluster comparison project), effect of additional physics, recent progress in galaxy clustering model…
We present a method to study the photometric properties of galaxies in filaments by stacking the galaxy populations between pairs of galaxy clusters. Using Sloan Digital Sky Survey data, this method can detect the inter-cluster filament galaxy overdensity with a significance of $\sim 5 σ$ out to $z=0.40$. Using this approach, we study the $g-r$ color and luminosity distribution of filament galaxies as a function of redshift. Consistent with expectation, filament galaxies are bimodal in their color distribution and contain a larger blue galaxy population than clusters. Filament galaxies are als…
We have identified a new class of galaxy cluster using data from the Galaxy Zoo project. These clusters are rare, and thus have apparently gone unnoticed before, despite their unusual properties. They appear especially anomalous when the morphological properties of their component galaxies are considered. Their identification therefore depends upon the visual inspection of large numbers of galaxies, a feat which has only recently been made possible by Galaxy Zoo, together with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We present the basic properties of our cluster sample, and discuss possible formation sc…
Many approaches to obtaining cosmological constraints rely on the connection between galaxies and dark matter. However, the distribution of galaxies is dependent on their formation and evolution as well as the cosmological model, and galaxy formation is still not a well-constrained process. Thus, methods that probe cosmology using galaxies as a tracer for dark matter must be able to accurately estimate the cosmological parameters without knowing the details of galaxy formation a priori. We apply this reasoning to the method of obtaining $Ω_m$ and $σ_8$ from galaxy clustering combined with the …
Measurements of galaxy cluster kinematics are important in understanding the dynamical state and evolution of clusters of galaxies, as well as constraining cosmological models. While it is well established that clusters exhibit non-spherical geometries, evident in the distribution of galaxies on the sky, azimuthal variations of galaxy kinematics within clusters have yet to be observed. Here we measure the azimuthal dependence of the line-of-sight velocity dispersion profile in a stacked sample of 1743 galaxy clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The clusters are drawn from the SDS…
We constrain radio source clustering towards $Planck$-selected galaxy clusters using the NVSS point source catalogue. The constraint can be utilised for generating realistic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) mocks, and for predicting detectable clusters count and quantifying source confusion in radio surveys.
The use of galaxy clusters as cosmological probes hinges on our ability to measure their masses accurately and with high precision. Hydrostatic mass is one of the most common methods for estimating the masses of individual galaxy clusters, which suffer from biases due to departures from hydrostatic equilibrium. Using a large, mass-limited sample of massive galaxy clusters from a high-resolution hydrodynamical cosmological simulation, in this work we show that in addition to turbulent and bulk gas velocities, acceleration of gas introduces biases in the hydrostatic mass estimate of galaxy clust…
Galaxy clusters exhibit a rich morphology during the early and intermediate stages of mass assembly, especially beyond their boundary. A classification scheme based on shapefinders deduced from the Minkowski functionals is examined to fully account for the morphological diversity of galaxy clusters, including relaxed and merging clusters, clusters fed by filamentary structures, and cluster-pair bridges. These configurations are conveniently treated with idealised geometric models and analytical formulae, some of which are novel. Examples from CLASH and LC$^2$ clusters and observed cluster-pair…
Galaxies which fall into clusters as part of the same infall halo can retain correlations due to their shared origin. N-body simulations are used to study properties of such galaxy subgroups within clusters, including their richnesses and prevalence. The sizes, densities and velocity dispersions of all subgroups with >= 8 galaxies are found and compared to those of the host clusters. The largest galaxy subgroup provides a preferred direction in the cluster and is compared to other preferred directions in the cluster. Scatter in cluster mass measurements (via five observables), along ~ 96 lines…
We perform a general computational analysis of possible post-collision mass distributions in high-speed galaxy cluster collisions in the presence of weakly self-interacting dark matter. Using this analysis, we show that weakly self-scattering dark matter can impart subtle yet measurable features in the mass distributions of colliding galaxy clusters even without significant disruptions to the dark matter halos of the colliding galaxy clusters themselves. Most profound such evidences are found to reside in the tails of dark matter halos' distributions, in the space between the colliding galaxy …
The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (hereafter SZ) effect is a promising tool to derive the gas temperature of galaxy clusters. The approximation of a spherically symmetric gas distribution is usually used to determine the temperature structure of galaxy clusters, but this approximation cannot properly describe merging galaxy clusters. The methods used so far, which do not assume the spherically symmetric distribution, permit us to derive 2D temperature maps of merging galaxy clusters. In this paper, we propose a method to derive the standard temperature deviation and temperature variance along the line-of…
We present a spectroscopic catalog of (mostly) red galaxies in 24 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.17 < z < 0.92 obtained with the LRIS instrument on the Keck I telescope. Here we describe the observations and the galaxy spectra, including the discovery of three cD galaxies with LINER emission spectra, and the spectroscopic discovery of four new galaxy-galaxy lenses in cluster environments.
The detection of galaxy clusters in present and future surveys enables measuring mass-to-light ratios, clustering properties or galaxy cluster abundances and therefore, constraining cosmological parameters. We present a new technique for detecting galaxy clusters, which is based on the Matched Filter Algorithm from a Bayesian point of view. The method is able to determine the position, redshift and richness of the cluster through the maximization of a filter depending on galaxy luminosity, density and photometric redshift combined with a galaxy cluster prior. We tested the algorithm through re…
X-ray counterparts for 35 galaxy clusters contained in the PF catalog of galaxy clusters and groups were found in XMM-Newton archive. 22 ones (all from ACO catalogue) have extended elliptic X-ray haloes appropriate for determination of orientation. Position angles and eccentricities were calculated and compared with cluster orientations optical band.
Massive galaxy clusters at intermediate redshifts act as gravitational lenses that can magnify supernovae (SNe) occurring in background galaxies. We assess the possibility to use lensed SNe to put constraints on the mass models of galaxy clusters and the Hubble parameter at high redshift. Due to the standard candle nature of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), observational information on the lensing magnification from an intervening galaxy cluster can be used to constrain the model for the cluster mass distribution. A statistical analysis using parametric cluster models was performed to investigate …
Galaxy cluster number count has been proven to be a powerful cosmological probe. However, cosmological constraints established with galaxy cluster number count are highly dependent on the calibration of the mass-observable relations. Thanks to its nearly mass independence the specific mass accretion rate of galaxy clusters is nearly insensitive to the calibration of mass-observable relations. The study of galaxy cluster number count evolution allows to probe the galaxy cluster mass accretion history in the context of an homogenous Universe. In this paper, we use relative abundance matching to …
We develop a method for reconstructing the two-dimensional, projected gravitational potential of galaxy clusters from observed line-of-sight velocity dispersions of cluster galaxies. It is the third of an intended series of papers aiming at a unique reconstruction method for cluster potentials combining lensing, X-ray, Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and kinematic data. The observed galaxy velocity dispersions are deprojected using the Richardson-Lucy algorithm. The obtained radial velocity dispersions are then related to the gravitational potential by using the tested assumption of a polytropic relation b…
We have developed a galaxy cluster finding technique based on the Delaunay Tessellation Field Estimator (DTFE) combined with caustic analysis. Our method allows us to recover clusters of galaxies within the mass range of 10^12 to 10^16 Msun. We have found a total of 113 galaxy clusters in the Galaxy and Mass Assembly survey (GAMA). In the corresponding mass range, the density of clusters found in this work is comparable to the density traced by clusters selected by the thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich Effect; however, we are able to cover a wider mass range. We present the analysis of the two-point …
We present an optimised galaxy cluster finder, 3D-Matched-Filter (3D-MF), which utilises galaxy cluster radial profiles, luminosity functions and redshift information to detect galaxy clusters in optical surveys. This method is an improvement over other matched-filter methods, most notably through implementing redshift slicing of the data to significantly reduce line-of-sight projections and related false positives. We apply our method to the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS) Deep fields, finding ~170 galaxy clusters per square degree in the 0.2 <= z <= 1.0 redshift range. …
Flux limited X-ray surveys of galaxy clusters show that clusters come in two roughly equally proportioned varieties: "cool core" clusters (CCs) and non-"cool core" clusters (NCCs). In previous work, we have demonstrated using cosmological $N$-body + Eulerian hydrodynamic simulations that NCCs are often consistent with early major mergers events that destroy embryonic CCs. In this paper we extend those results and conduct a series of simulationsusing different methods of gas cooling, and of energy and metal feedback from supernovae, where we attempt to produce a population of clusters with real…
The mass function of galaxy clusters is a sensitive tracer of the gravitational evolution of the cosmic large-scale structure and serves as an important census of the fraction of matter bound in large structures. We obtain the mass function by fitting the observed cluster X-ray luminosity distribution from the REFLEX galaxy cluster survey to models of cosmological structure formation. We marginalise over uncertainties in the cosmological parameters as well as those of the relevant galaxy cluster scaling relations. The mass function is determined with an uncertainty less than 10% in the mass ra…
Gravitational lensing is a powerful probe of the mass distribution of galaxy clusters and cosmology. However, accurate measurements of the cluster mass profiles are limited by uncertainties in cluster astrophysics. In this work, we present a physically motivated model of baryonic effects on the cluster mass profiles, which self-consistently takes into account the impact of baryons on the concentration as well as mass accretion histories of galaxy clusters. We calibrate this model using the Omega500 hydrodynamical cosmological simulations of galaxy clusters with varying baryonic physics. Our mo…
Galaxy clusters are spectacular. We provide a Google Earth compatible imagery for the deep co-added images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and make it a tool for examing galaxy clusters. More details about how to get it can be found from the following website: https://sites.google.com/site/geclusters/
To study environmental effects on the circumgalactic medium (CGM), we use the samples of redMaPPer galaxy clusters, background quasars and cluster galaxies from the SDSS. With ~82 000 quasar spectra, we detect 197 MgII absorbers in and around the clusters. The detection rate per quasar is 2.7$\pm$0.7 times higher inside the clusters than outside the clusters, indicating that MgII absorbers are relatively abundant in clusters. However, when considering the galaxy number density, the absorber-to-galaxy ratio is rather low inside the clusters. If we assume that MgII absorbers are mainly contribut…
Galaxy cluster centring is a key issue for precision cosmology studies using galaxy surveys. Mis-identification of central galaxies causes systematics in various studies such as cluster lensing, satellite kinematics, and galaxy clustering. The red-sequence Matched-filter Probabilistic Percolation (redMaPPer) estimates the probability that each member galaxy is central from photometric information rather than specifying one central galaxy. The redMaPPer estimates can be used for calibrating the off-centring effect, however, the centring algorithm has not previously been well-tested. We test the…
Morphological types were determined for 247 rich galaxy clusters from the PF Catalogue of Galaxy Clusters and Groups. The adapted types are based on classical morphological schemes and consider concentration to the cluster center, the signs of preferential direction or plane in the cluster, and the positions of the brightest galaxies. It is shown that both concentration and preferential plane are significant and independent morphological criteria.
The method for detection of the galaxy cluster rotation based on the study of distribution of member galaxies with velocities lower and higher of the cluster mean velocity over the cluster image is proposed. The search for rotation is made for flat clusters with $a/b>1.8$ and BMI type clusters which are expected to be rotating. For comparison there were studied also round clusters and clusters of NBMI type, the second by brightness galaxy in which does not differ significantly from the cluster cD galaxy. Seventeen out of studied 65 clusters are found to be rotating. It was found that the detec…
Cosmological constraints from X-ray and microwave observations of galaxy clusters are subjected to systematic uncertainties. Non-thermal pressure support due to internal gas motions in galaxy clusters is one of the major sources of astrophysical uncertainties. Using a mass-limited sample of galaxy clusters from a high-resolution hydrodynamical cosmological simulation, we characterize the non-thermal pressure fraction profile and study its dependence on redshift, mass, and mass accretion rate. We find that the non-thermal pressure fraction profile is universal across redshift when galaxy cluste…
Although galaxy clusters have proved to be wonderful laboratories for testing a plethora of modified gravity theories and other exotic alternatives to $Λ$CDM, until a few years ago, there was only one paper (from 1974), which obtained a limit on graviton mass of $\mathcal{O}(10^{-29})$ eV with clusters. To rectify this, in the last few years multiple works have obtained different bounds on graviton mass using single cluster data as well as stacking galaxy catalogs. We review these recent limits on graviton mass using galaxy clusters obtained using disparate methods.
We investigate structural properties of massive galaxy populations in the central regions of five very massive galaxy clusters at z~1.4-1.7 from the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect survey. We probe the connection between galaxy structure and broad stellar population properties, at stellar masses log(M/Msun)>10.85. We find that quiescent and star-forming cluster galaxy populations are largely dominated by bulge- and disk-dominated sources, respectively, with relative contributions consistent with those of field counterparts. At the same time, the enhanced quiescent galaxy fractio…
Recently, the discovery of the radial acceleration relation (RAR) in galaxies has been regarded as an indirect support of alternative theories of gravity such as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) and modified gravity. This relation indicates a tight correlation between dynamical mass and baryonic mass in galaxies with different sizes and morphology. However, if the RAR relation is scale-independent and could be explained by alternative theories of gravity, this relation should be universal and true for galaxy clusters as well. In this article, by using the x-ray data of a sample of galaxy clu…
The gravitational slip parameter is an important discriminator between large classes of gravity theories at cosmological and astrophysical scales. In this work we use a combination of simulated information of galaxy cluster mass profiles, inferred by Strong+Weak lensing analyses and by the study of the dynamics of the cluster member galaxies, to reconstruct the gravitational slip parameter $η$ and predict the accuracy with which it can be constrained with current and future galaxy cluster surveys. Performing a full-likelihood statistical analysis, we show that galaxy cluster observations can c…
The clustering amplitude of galaxies depends on their intrinsic luminosity. We compare the properties of publicly available galaxy formation models with clustering measurements from the two-degree field galaxy redshift survey. The model predictions show the same qualitative behaviour as the data but fail to match the observations at the level of accuracy at which current measurements can be made. We demonstrate that this is due to the model producing too many satellite galaxies in massive haloes. We implement simple models to describe two new processes, satellite-satellite mergers and the tida…
The Milky Way System and the Andromeda galaxy experienced radically different evolutionary histories. Nevertheless, it is found that these two galaxies ended up with globular cluster systems in which individual clusters have indistinguishable distributions of half-light radii. Furthermore globulars in both M31 and the Galaxy are found to have radii that are independent of their luminosities. In this respect globular clusters differ drastically from early-type galaxies in which half-light radius and luminosity are tightly correlated. Metal-rich globular clusters in M31 occupy a slightly larger …
We present the "Galaxy Cluster Merger Catalog." This catalog provides an extensive suite of mock observations and related data for N-body and hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy cluster mergers and clusters from cosmological simulations. These mock observations consist of projections of a number of important observable quantities in several different wavebands as well as along different lines of sight through each simulation domain. The web interface to the catalog consists of easily browseable images over epoch and projection direction, as well as download links for the raw data and a JS9 in…
We present a large catalog of optically selected galaxy clusters from the application of a new Gaussian Mixture Brightest Cluster Galaxy (GMBCG) algorithm to SDSS Data Release 7 data. The algorithm detects clusters by identifying the red sequence plus Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) feature, which is unique for galaxy clusters and does not exist among field galaxies. Red sequence clustering in color space is detected using an Error Corrected Gaussian Mixture Model. We run GMBCG on 8240 square degrees of photometric data from SDSS DR7 to assemble the largest ever optical galaxy cluster catalog, …
