Stacking caustic masses from galaxy clusters
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (United States)
Ongoing and future spectroscopic surveys will measure numerous galaxy redshifts within tens of thousands of galaxy clusters. However, the sampling within these clusters will be low, 151000 galaxies per ensemble phase space, the escape-velocity edge becomes readily identifiable and the presence of interloping galaxies is minimized. We develop and test an algorithm to trace the projected phase-space surface directly, which results in minimally biased dynamical mass estimates. We then quantify how binning and sampling affect the phase-space-based mass estimates when using an observational proxy that incorporates realistic mass scatter, like richness, and find the added uncertainty in the binning procedure has minimal influence on the resulting bias and scatter of the stacked mass estimates.
- OSTI ID:
- 22869524
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 834; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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