Galaxy Cluster Mass Reconstruction Project – IV. Understanding the effects of imperfect membership on cluster mass estimation
Abstract
Here, the primary difficulty in measuring dynamical masses of galaxy clusters from galaxy data lies in the separation between true cluster members from interloping galaxies along the line of sight. We study the impact of membership contamination and incompleteness on cluster mass estimates obtained with 25 commonly used techniques applied to nearly 1000 mock clusters with precise spectroscopic redshifts. We show that all methods overestimate or underestimate cluster masses when applied to contaminated or incomplete galaxy samples, respectively. This appears to be the main source of the intrinsic scatter in the mass scaling relation. Applying corrections based on a prior knowledge of contamination and incompleteness can reduce the scatter to the level of shot noise expected for poorly sampled clusters. We establish an empirical model quantifying the effect of imperfect membership on cluster mass estimation and discuss its universal and method-dependent features. We find that both imperfect membership and the response of the mass estimators depend on cluster mass, effectively causing a flattening of the estimated–true mass relation. Imperfect membership thus alters cluster counts determined from spectroscopic surveys, hence the cosmological parameters that depend on such counts.
- Authors:
-
[1];
[2];
[17]
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Univ. of Toronto, Toronto, ON (Canada)
- Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, Paris (France)
- Univ. of Nottingham, Nottingham (United Kingdom)
- Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Brazil)
- Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, CA (United States); USA Freelance Science Journalist, San Diego, CA (United States)
- Swinburne Univ. of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC (Australia)
- Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
- Stony Brook Univ., Stony Brook, NY (United States)
- Univ. de Antioquia, Medellin (Colombia)
- Leibniz-Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Potsdam (Germany)
- Univ. of Birmingham, Birmingham (United Kingdom)
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States); Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)
- INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste,Trieste (Italy)
- Tarkvara Tehnoloogia Arenduskeskus (STACC), Tartu (Estonia)
- Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Potsdam (Germany); Univ. of Tartu, Toravere (Estonia)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1490629
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-76SF00515; SEV-2012-0249; AST-1055081; 279396; 16599; 71676; EU48684
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 481; Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 0035-8711
- Publisher:
- Royal Astronomical Society
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; methods: numerical; methods: statistical; galaxies: clusters: general; galaxies: haloes; galaxies: kinematics and dynamics; cosmology: observations
Citation Formats
Wojtak, R., Old, L., Mamon, G. A., Pearce, F. R., de Carvalho, R., Sifón, C., Gray, M. E., Skibba, R. A., Croton, D., Bamford, S., Gifford, D., von der Linden, A., Muñoz-Cuartas, J. C., Müller, V., Pearson, R. J., Rozo, E., Rykoff, E., Saro, A., Sepp, T., and Tempel, E. Galaxy Cluster Mass Reconstruction Project – IV. Understanding the effects of imperfect membership on cluster mass estimation. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1093/mnras/sty2257.
Wojtak, R., Old, L., Mamon, G. A., Pearce, F. R., de Carvalho, R., Sifón, C., Gray, M. E., Skibba, R. A., Croton, D., Bamford, S., Gifford, D., von der Linden, A., Muñoz-Cuartas, J. C., Müller, V., Pearson, R. J., Rozo, E., Rykoff, E., Saro, A., Sepp, T., & Tempel, E. Galaxy Cluster Mass Reconstruction Project – IV. Understanding the effects of imperfect membership on cluster mass estimation. United States. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2257
Wojtak, R., Old, L., Mamon, G. A., Pearce, F. R., de Carvalho, R., Sifón, C., Gray, M. E., Skibba, R. A., Croton, D., Bamford, S., Gifford, D., von der Linden, A., Muñoz-Cuartas, J. C., Müller, V., Pearson, R. J., Rozo, E., Rykoff, E., Saro, A., Sepp, T., and Tempel, E. Sat .
"Galaxy Cluster Mass Reconstruction Project – IV. Understanding the effects of imperfect membership on cluster mass estimation". United States. doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty2257. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1490629.
@article{osti_1490629,
title = {Galaxy Cluster Mass Reconstruction Project – IV. Understanding the effects of imperfect membership on cluster mass estimation},
author = {Wojtak, R. and Old, L. and Mamon, G. A. and Pearce, F. R. and de Carvalho, R. and Sifón, C. and Gray, M. E. and Skibba, R. A. and Croton, D. and Bamford, S. and Gifford, D. and von der Linden, A. and Muñoz-Cuartas, J. C. and Müller, V. and Pearson, R. J. and Rozo, E. and Rykoff, E. and Saro, A. and Sepp, T. and Tempel, E.},
abstractNote = {Here, the primary difficulty in measuring dynamical masses of galaxy clusters from galaxy data lies in the separation between true cluster members from interloping galaxies along the line of sight. We study the impact of membership contamination and incompleteness on cluster mass estimates obtained with 25 commonly used techniques applied to nearly 1000 mock clusters with precise spectroscopic redshifts. We show that all methods overestimate or underestimate cluster masses when applied to contaminated or incomplete galaxy samples, respectively. This appears to be the main source of the intrinsic scatter in the mass scaling relation. Applying corrections based on a prior knowledge of contamination and incompleteness can reduce the scatter to the level of shot noise expected for poorly sampled clusters. We establish an empirical model quantifying the effect of imperfect membership on cluster mass estimation and discuss its universal and method-dependent features. We find that both imperfect membership and the response of the mass estimators depend on cluster mass, effectively causing a flattening of the estimated–true mass relation. Imperfect membership thus alters cluster counts determined from spectroscopic surveys, hence the cosmological parameters that depend on such counts.},
doi = {10.1093/mnras/sty2257},
journal = {Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society},
number = 1,
volume = 481,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {8}
}
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