No Arabic abstract
We present observations, analysis and results for the first-year operation of AMiBA, an interferometric experiment designed to study cosmology via the measurement of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). AMiBA is the first CMB interferometer operating at 3 mm to have reported successful results, currently with seven close-packed antennas of 60-cm diameter giving a synthesized resolution of around 6. During 2007 AMiBA detected the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effects (SZE) of six galaxy clusters at redshift 0.091 <= z <= 0.322. An observing strategy with on-off-source switching is used to minimize the effects from electronic offset and ground pickup. Planets were used to test the observational capability of AMiBA and to calibrate the conversion from correlator time-lag data to visibilities. The detailed formalism for data analysis is given. We summarize our early tests including observations of planets and quasars, and present images, visibility profiles, the estimated central coordinates, sizes, and SZE amplitudes of the galaxy clusters. Science results are summarized. We also discuss possible systematic effects in the results.
Most Sunyaev--Zeldovich (SZ) and X-ray analyses of galaxy clusters try to constrain the cluster total mass and/or gas mass using parameterised models and assumptions of spherical symmetry and hydrostatic equilibrium. By numerically exploring the probability distributions of the cluster parameters given the simulated interferometric SZ data in the context of Bayesian methods, and assuming a beta-model for the electron number density we investigate the capability of this model and analysis to return the simulated cluster input quantities via three rameterisations. In parameterisation I we assume that the T is an input parameter. We find that parameterisation I can hardly constrain the cluster parameters. We then investigate parameterisations II and III in which fg(r200) replaces temperature as a main variable. In parameterisation II we relate M_T(r200) and T assuming hydrostatic equilibrium. We find that parameterisation II can constrain the cluster physical parameters but the temperature estimate is biased low. In parameterisation III, the virial theorem replaces the hydrostatic equilibrium assumption. We find that parameterisation III results in unbiased estimates of the cluster properties. We generate a second simulated cluster using a generalised NFW (GNFW) pressure profile and analyse it with an entropy based model to take into account the temperature gradient in our analysis and improve the cluster gas density distribution. This model also constrains the cluster physical parameters and the results show a radial decline in the gas temperature as expected. The mean cluster total mass estimates are also within 1 sigma from the simulated cluster true values. However, we find that for at least interferometric SZ analysis in practice at the present time, there is no differences in the AMI visibilities between the two models. This may of course change as the instruments improve.
We investigate the contamination of the Sunyaev--Zeldovich (SZ) effect for six galaxy clusters, A1689, A1995, A2142, A2163, A2261, and A2390, observed by the Y. T. Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy during 2007. With the range of baselines used, we find that the largest effect (of order 13%-50% of the central SZ flux density) comes from primary anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and exceeds the thermal noise in all six cases. Contamination from discrete radio sources is estimated to be at a level of (3%-60%) of the central SZ flux density. We use the statistics of these contaminating sources to estimate and correct the errors in the measured SZ effects of these clusters.
The Yuan-Tseh Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA) is a co-planar interferometer array operating at a wavelength of 3mm to measure the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) of galaxy clusters. In the first phase of operation -- with a compact 7-element array with 0.6m antennas (AMiBA-7) -- we observed six clusters at angular scales from 5arcmin to 23arcmin. Here, we describe the expansion of AMiBA to a 13-element array with 1.2m antennas (AMiBA-13), its subsequent commissioning, and our cluster SZE observing program. The most important changes compared to AMiBA-7 are (1) array re-configuration with baselines ranging from 1.4m to 4.8m covering angular scales from 2arcmin to 11.5arcmin, (2) thirteen new lightweight carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) 1.2m reflectors, and (3) additional correlators and six new receivers. From the AMiBA-13 SZE observing program, we present here maps of a subset of twelve clusters. In highlights, we combine AMiBA-7 and AMiBA-13 observations of Abell 1689 and perform a joint fitting assuming a generalized NFW pressure profile. Our cylindrically integrated Compton-y values for this cluster are consistent with the BIMA/OVRA, SZA, and Planck results. We report the first targeted SZE detection towards the optically selected galaxy cluster RCS J1447+0828, and we demonstrate the ability of AMiBA SZE data to serve as a proxy for the total cluster mass. Finally, we show that our AMiBA-SZE derived cluster masses are consistent with recent lensing mass measurements in the literature.
The Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect (SZE) has been observed toward six massive galaxy clusters, at redshifts 0.091 leq z leq 0.322 in the 86-102 GHz band with the Y. T. Lee Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA). We modify an iterative method, based on the isothermal beta-models, to derive the electron temperature T_e, total mass M_t, gas mass M_g, and integrated Compton Y within r_2500, from the AMiBA SZE data. Non-isothermal universal temperature profile (UTP) beta models are also considered in this paper. These results are in good agreement with those deduced from other observations. We also investigate the embedded scaling relations, due to the assumptions that have been made in the method we adopted, between these purely SZE-deduced T_e, M_t, M_g and Y. Our results suggest that cluster properties may be measurable with SZE observations alone. However, the assumptions built into the pure-SZE method bias the results of scaling relation estimations and need further study.
The Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) provides a powerful tool for cosmological studies. Through recent advances in instrumentation and observational techniques it is now possible to obtain high quality measurements of the effect toward galaxy clusters. The analysis of the SZE toward a few tens of clusters has already led to interesting constraints on the Hubble constant and the mass density of the universe. In the near future, instruments exploiting the redshift independence of the SZE will be used to conduct deep surveys for galaxy clusters providing detailed information on the growth of large scale structure, tests of cosmological models and tight constraints on the cosmological parameters that describe our universe. In this review we provide an overview of the SZE and its use for cosmological studies. We summarize the current state of observations and the constraints on cosmological parameters already obtained and we discuss the power of using the SZE for future deep cluster surveys.