THE ATACAMA COSMOLOGY TELESCOPE: PHYSICAL PROPERTIES AND PURITY OF A GALAXY CLUSTER SAMPLE SELECTED VIA THE SUNYAEV-ZEL'DOVICH EFFECT

Journal Article · Wed Nov 10 00:00:00 EST 2010 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/723/2/1523· OSTI ID:21471240

Menanteau, Felipe; Acquaviva, Viviana; Baker, Andrew J; Deshpande, Amruta J ^[1]; Gonzalez, Jorge; Juin, Jean-Baptiste; Aguirre, Paula; Barrientos, L Felipe; Duenner, Rolando ^[2]; Marriage, Tobias A ^[3]; Reese, Erik D; Devlin, Mark J; Dicker, Simon ^[4]; Appel, John William; Essinger-Hileman, Thomas; Fowler, Joseph W ^[5]; Battistelli, Elia S ^[6]; Bond, J Richard ^[7]; Das, Sudeep ^[8]; Dunkley, Joanna ^[9]

---

1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, 136 Frelinghuysen Rd, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States)
2. Departamento de Astronomia y Astrofisica, Facultad de Fisica, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Casilla 306, Santiago 22 (Chile)
3. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (United States)
4. University of Pennsylvania, Physics and Astronomy, 209 South 33rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (United States)
5. Joseph Henry Laboratories of Physics, Jadwin Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (United States)
6. Department of Physics, University of Rome 'La Sapienza', Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, I-00185 Rome (Italy)
7. Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8 (Canada)
8. Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, UC Berkeley, 366 Le Conte Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
9. Department of Astrophysics, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3RH (United Kingdom)

We present optical and X-ray properties for the first confirmed galaxy cluster sample selected by the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) from 148 GHz maps over 455 deg{sup 2} of sky made with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). These maps, coupled with multi-band imaging on 4 m class optical telescopes, have yielded a sample of 23 galaxy clusters with redshifts between 0.118 and 1.066. Of these 23 clusters, 10 are newly discovered. The selection of this sample is approximately mass limited and essentially independent of redshift. We provide optical positions, images, redshifts, and X-ray fluxes and luminosities for the full sample, and X-ray temperatures of an important subset. The mass limit of the full sample is around 8.0 x 10{sup 14} M{sub sun}, with a number distribution that peaks around a redshift of 0.4. For the 10 highest significance SZE-selected cluster candidates, all of which are optically confirmed, the mass threshold is 1 x 10{sup 15} M{sub sun} and the redshift range is 0.167-1.066. Archival observations from Chandra, XMM-Newton, and ROSAT provide X-ray luminosities and temperatures that are broadly consistent with this mass threshold. Our optical follow-up procedure also allowed us to assess the purity of the ACT cluster sample. Eighty (one hundred) percent of the 148 GHz candidates with signal-to-noise ratios greater than 5.1 (5.7) are confirmed as massive clusters. The reported sample represents one of the largest SZE-selected sample of massive clusters over all redshifts within a cosmologically significant survey volume, which will enable cosmological studies as well as future studies on the evolution, morphology, and stellar populations in the most massive clusters in the universe.

• OSTI ID: 21471240
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 723, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/723/2/1523; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
BACKGROUND RADIATION
COSMOLOGY
GALACTIC EVOLUTION
GALAXIES
GALAXY CLUSTERS
IMAGES
LUMINOSITY
MAPS
MASS
MORPHOLOGY
RED SHIFT
SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO
TELESCOPES
UNIVERSE
X RADIATION
DIMENSIONLESS NUMBERS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
EVOLUTION
IONIZING RADIATIONS
OPTICAL PROPERTIES
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
RADIATIONS