GALAXY CLUSTERS SELECTED WITH THE SUNYAEV-ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT FROM 2008 SOUTH POLE TELESCOPE OBSERVATIONS
- Department of Physics, McGill University, 3600 Rue University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T8 (Canada)
- Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, CF24 3YB (United Kingdom)
- University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois, 1002 West Green Street, Urbana, IL 61801 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
- Department of Physics, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616 (United States)
We present a detection-significance-limited catalog of 21 Sunyaev-Zel'dovich-selected galaxy clusters. These clusters, along with one unconfirmed candidate, were identified in 178 deg{sup 2} of sky surveyed in 2008 by the South Pole Telescope (SPT) to a depth of 18 {mu}K arcmin at 150 GHz. Optical imaging from the Blanco Cosmology Survey (BCS) and Magellan telescopes provided photometric (and in some cases spectroscopic) redshift estimates, with catalog redshifts ranging from z = 0.15 to z>1, with a median z = 0.74. Of the 21 confirmed galaxy clusters, 3 were previously identified as Abell clusters, 3 were presented as SPT discoveries in Staniszewski et al., and 3 were first identified in a recent analysis of BCS data by Menanteau et al.; the remaining 12 clusters are presented for the first time in this work. Simulated observations of the SPT fields predict the sample to be nearly 100% complete above a mass threshold of M{sub 200} {approx} 5 x 10{sup 14} M{sub sun} h {sup -1} at z = 0.6. This completeness threshold pushes to lower mass with increasing redshift, dropping to {approx}4 x 10{sup 14} M{sub sun} h {sup -1} at z = 1. The size and redshift distribution of this catalog are in good agreement with expectations based on our current understanding of galaxy clusters and cosmology. In combination with other cosmological probes, we use this cluster catalog to improve estimates of cosmological parameters. Assuming a standard spatially flat wCDM cosmological model, the addition of our catalog to the WMAP seven-year results yields {sigma}{sub 8} = 0.81 {+-} 0.09 and w = -1.07 {+-} 0.29, a {approx}50% improvement in precision on both parameters over WMAP7 alone.
- OSTI ID:
- 21464629
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 722, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/722/2/1180; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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