Coping with scatter in galaxy cluster scaling relationships
Galaxy clusters exhibit regular scaling relations among their bulkproperties, establishing vital links between halo mass and clusterobservables. Therefore, precision cosmology studies depending on theselinks benefit from a better understanding of scatter in themass-observable scaling relations. Here, we study the role of mergerprocesses in introducing scatter into the mass-temperature ($M\mhyphenT_X$) relation, using a sample of 121 galaxy clusters simulated withradiative cooling and supernova feedback, along with threemorphological statistics previously proposed to measure X-ray surfacebrightness substructure. These are the centroid variation ($w$), theaxial ratio ($\eta$), and the power ratios ($P_{20}$) and$P_{30}$). We also examine spectral statistics which do not requireimaging. In particular we look at the ratio of hardband to broadbandspectral-fit temperatures $T_{HBR}$, which is a measure of temperatureinhomogeneity inferred from X-ray spectral properties. We find thatin this set of simulated clusters, each substructure measure iscorrelated with a cluster's departures $\delta \ln T$ and $\delta \lnM$ from the mean $M\mhyphen T_X$ relation, both for emission-weightedtemperatures $T_{EW}$ and for spectroscopic-like temperatures$T_{SL}$, in the sense that clusters with more substructure tend to becooler at a given halo mass. In all cases, a three-parameter fit tothe $M\mhyphen T_X$ relation that includes substructure informationhas less scatter than a two-parameter fit to the basic $M\mhyphen T_X$relation. In this work we also test the effectiveness of $T_{HBR}$ asa measure of scatter using the 118 galaxy clusters from our sample forwhich we have simulated X-ray images using the \xmas2 software. Wefind that, while $T_{HBR}$ is correlated with clusters' departures$\delta \ln M$ from the mean $M\mhyphen T_X$ relation, the effect ismodest. Finally, we present the CosmoSurvey software for efficientlyevaluating simple flux-limited galaxy cluster survey models oncommodity hardware, and discuss possible extensions.
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- In Collections
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Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Copyright Status
- In Copyright
- Material Type
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Theses
- Authors
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Ventimiglia, David A.
- Thesis Advisors
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Voit, G. Mark
- Committee Members
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O'Shea, Brian
Zepf, Steve
Birge, Norman
Pratt, Scott
- Date
- 2012
- Program of Study
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Astrophysics and Astronomy
- Degree Level
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Doctoral
- Language
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English
- Pages
- xiv, 124 pages
- ISBN
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9781267834645
1267834641
- Permalink
- https://doi.org/doi:10.25335/x6yr-es66