SEARCHING FOR COOLING SIGNATURES IN STRONG LENSING GALAXY CLUSTERS: EVIDENCE AGAINST BARYONS SHAPING THE MATTER DISTRIBUTION IN CLUSTER CORES
- Astronomy Department, University of California, Berkeley, B-20 Hearst Field Annex 3411, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411 (United States)
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, 77 Massachusetts Avenue 37-287, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)
- Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1029, Blindern, NO-0315 Oslo (Norway)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1042 (United States)
- Astronomy Department, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (United States)
The process by which the mass density profile of certain galaxy clusters becomes centrally concentrated enough to produce high strong lensing (SL) cross-sections is not well understood. It has been suggested that the baryonic condensation of the intracluster medium (ICM) due to cooling may drag dark matter to the cores and thus steepen the profile. In this work, we search for evidence of ongoing ICM cooling in the first large, well-defined sample of SL selected galaxy clusters in the range 0.1 < z < 0.6. Based on known correlations between the ICM cooling rate and both optical emission line luminosity and star formation, we measure, for a sample of 89 SL clusters, the fraction of clusters that have [O II]{lambda}{lambda}3727 emission in their brightest cluster galaxy (BCG). We find that the fraction of line-emitting BCGs is constant as a function of redshift for z > 0.2 and shows no statistically significant deviation from the total cluster population. Specific star formation rates, as traced by the strength of the 4000 A break, D{sub 4000}, are also consistent with the general cluster population. Finally, we use optical imaging of the SL clusters to measure the angular separation, R{sub arc}, between the arc and the center of mass of each lensing cluster in our sample and test for evidence of changing [O II] emission and D{sub 4000} as a function of R{sub arc}, a proxy observable for SL cross-sections. D{sub 4000} is constant with all values of R{sub arc}, and the [O II] emission fractions show no dependence on R{sub arc} for R{sub arc} > 10'' and only very marginal evidence of increased weak [O II] emission for systems with R{sub arc} < 10''. These results argue against the ability of baryonic cooling associated with cool core activity in the cores of galaxy clusters to strongly modify the underlying dark matter potential, leading to an increase in SL cross-sections.
- OSTI ID:
- 22121881
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 772, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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