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Title: Velocity segregation and systematic biases in velocity dispersion estimates with the SPT-GMOS spectroscopic survey

Journal Article · · The Astrophysical Journal (Online)
ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [6];  [7];  [8]; ORCiD logo [1];  [9];  [7];  [10]; ORCiD logo [11]; ORCiD logo [7]; ORCiD logo [12];  [13]
  1. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  2. Colby College, Waterville, ME (United States)
  3. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
  4. Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, IL (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
  5. Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, IL (United States); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
  6. Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City, MO (United States)
  7. Ludwig-Maximilians-Univ., Munich (Germany); Excellence Cluster Universe, Garching (Germany)
  8. Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), Taipei (Taiwan)
  9. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States); NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffett Field, CA (United States)
  10. Univ. of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI (United States)
  11. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA (United States)
  12. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States); Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA (United States)
  13. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, La Serena (Chile)
+ Show Author Affiliations

The velocity distribution of galaxies in clusters is not universal; rather, galaxies are segregated according to their spectral type and relative luminosity. We examine the velocity distributions of different populations of galaxies within 89 Sunyaev Zel’dovich (SZ) selected galaxy clusters spanning 0.28 < z < 1.08. Our sample is primarily draw from the SPT-GMOS spectroscopic survey, supplemented by additional published spectroscopy, resulting in a final spectroscopic sample of 4148 galaxy spectra—2868 cluster members. The velocity dispersion of star-forming cluster galaxies is 17 ± 4% greater than that of passive cluster galaxies, and the velocity dispersion of bright (m < m* - 0.5) cluster galaxies is 11 ± 4% lower than the velocity dispersion of our total member population. We find good agreement with simulations regarding the shape of the relationship between the measured velocity dispersion and the fraction of passive vs. star-forming galaxies used to measure it, but we find a small offset between this relationship as measured in data and simulations in which suggests that our dispersions are systematically low by as much as 3% relative to simulations. We argue that this offset could be interpreted as a measurement of the effective velocity bias that describes the ratio of our observed velocity dispersions and the intrinsic velocity dispersion of dark matter particles in a published simulation result. Measuring velocity bias in this way suggests that large spectroscopic surveys can improve dispersion-based mass-observable scaling relations for cosmology even in the face of velocity biases, by quantifying and ultimately calibrating them out.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-07CH11359; AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1345625
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1372092
Report Number(s):
FERMILAB-PUB-16-610-AE; arXiv:1612.02827; 1502585
Journal Information:
The Astrophysical Journal (Online), Vol. 837, Issue 1; ISSN 1538-4357
Publisher:
Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 15 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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SPT-GMOS: A Gemini/GMOS-South Spectroscopic Survey of Galaxy Clusters in the SPT-SZ Survey text January 2016
The Origin of Star Formation Gradients in Rich Galaxy Clusters text January 2000
Galaxy Morphological Segregation in Clusters: Local vs. Global Conditions text January 2000
The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: Near Infrared Galaxy Luminosity Functions text January 2000
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Self Calibration in Cluster Studies of Dark Energy: Combining the Cluster Redshift Distribution, the Power Spectrum and Mass Measurements text January 2003
CAIRNS: The Cluster And Infall Region Nearby Survey I. Redshifts and Mass Profiles text January 2003
Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003 text January 2003
Star formation activity of intermediate redshift cluster galaxies out to the infall regions text January 2004
Shapes and Alignments of Galaxy Cluster Halos text January 2004
Velocity Dispersion of 335 Galaxy Clusters Selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Statistical Evidence for Dynamical Interaction, and Against Ram-Pressure Stripping text January 2005
Empirical Color Transformations Between SDSS Photometry and Other Photometric Systems text January 2006
The Mass Function of Nearby Galaxy Clusters text January 1993
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The Average Mass Profile of Galaxy Clusters text January 1997
Density profiles and substructure of dark matter halos: converging results at ultra-high numerical resolution text January 1999
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Spectroscopic Confirmation of Five Galaxy Clusters at z > 1.25 in the 2500 deg 2 SPT-SZ Survey journal December 2018
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Galaxy kinematics and mass calibration in massive SZE-selected galaxy clusters to z  = 1.3 journal October 2018

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Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
cosmology: observations
galaxies: clusters: general
galaxies: distances and redshifts
galaxies: evolution
galaxies: kinematics and dynamics