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A. Vikhlinin
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Sensitive, wide-area X-ray surveys which would be possible with the WFXT will detect huge samples of virialized objects spanning the mass range from sub-groups to the most massive clusters, and extending in redshift to beyond z=2. These samples will be an excellent dataset for carrying out many traditional cosmological tests using the cluster mass function and power spectrum. Uniquely, WFXT will be able not only to detect clusters but also to make detailed X-ray measurements for a large number of clusters and groups right from the survey data. Very high quality measurements of the cluster mass function and spatial correlation over a very wide range of masses, spatial scales, and redshifts, will be useful for expanding the cosmological discovery space, and in particular, in searching for departures from the concordant Lambda-CDM cosmological model. Finding such departures would have far-reaching implications on our understanding of the fundamental physics which governs the Universe.
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The eROSITA mission will provide the largest sample of galaxy clusters detected in X-ray to date (one hundred thousand expected). This sample will be used to constrain cosmological models by measuring cluster masses. An important mass proxy is the electron temperature of the hot plasma detected in X-rays. We want to understand the detection properties and possible bias in temperatures due to unresolved substructures in the cluster halos. We simulated a large number of galaxy cluster spectra with known temperature substructures and compared the results from analysing eROSITA simulated observations to earlier results from Chandra. We were able to constrain a bias in cluster temperatures and its impact on cluster masses as well as cosmological parameters derived from the survey. We found temperatures in the eROSITA survey to be biased low by about five per cent due to unresolved temperature substructures (compared to emission-weighted average temperatures from the Chandra maps). This bias would have a significant impact on the eROSITA cosmology constraints if not accounted for in the calibration. We isolated the bias effect that substructures in galaxy clusters have on temperature measurements and their impact on derived cosmological parameters in the eROSITA cluster survey.
We present the results from extensive, new observations of the Perseus Cluster of galaxies, obtained as a Suzaku Key Project. The 85 pointings analyzed span eight azimuthal directions out to 2 degrees = 2.6 Mpc, to and beyond the virial radius r_200 ~ 1.8 Mpc, offering the most detailed X-ray observation of the intracluster medium (ICM) at large radii in any cluster to date. The azimuthally averaged density profile for r>0.4r_200 is relatively flat, with a best-fit power-law index of 1.69+/-0.13 significantly smaller than expected from numerical simulations. The entropy profile in the outskirts lies systematically below the power-law behavior expected from large-scale structure formation models which include only the heating associated with gravitational collapse. The pressure profile beyond ~0.6r_200 shows an excess with respect to the best-fit model describing the SZ measurements for a sample of clusters observed with Planck. The inconsistency between the expected and measured density, entropy, and pressure profiles can be explained primarily by an overestimation of the density due to inhomogeneous gas distribution in the outskirts; there is no evidence for a bias in the temperature measurements within the virial radius. We find significant differences in thermodynamic properties of the ICM at large radii along the different arms. Along the cluster minor axis, we find a flattening of the entropy profiles outside ~0.6r_200, while along the major axis, the entropy rises all the way to the outskirts. Correspondingly, the inferred gas clumping factor is typically larger along the minor than along the major axis.
We present a new cosmological probe for galaxy clusters, the halo sparsity. This characterises halos in terms of the ratio of halo masses measured at two different radii and carries cosmological information encoded in the halo mass profile. Building upon the work of Balmes et al. (2014) we test the properties of the sparsity using halo catalogs from a numerical N-body simulation of ($2.6$ Gpc/h)$^3$ volume with $4096^3$ particles. We show that at a given redshift the average sparsity can be predicted from prior knowledge of the halo mass function. This provides a quantitative framework to infer cosmological parameter constraints using measurements of the sparsity of galaxy clusters. We show this point by performing a likelihood analysis of synthetic datasets with no systematics, from which we recover the input fiducial cosmology. We also perform a preliminary analysis of potential systematic errors and provide an estimate of the impact of baryonic effects on sparsity measurements. We evaluate the sparsity for a sample of 104 clusters with hydrostatic masses from X-ray observations and derive constraints on the cosmic matter density $Omega_m$ and the normalisation amplitude of density fluctuations at the $8$ Mpc h$^{-1}$ scale, $sigma_8$. Assuming no systematics, we find $Omega_m=0.42pm 0.17$ and $sigma_8=0.80pm 0.31$ at $1sigma$, corresponding to $S_8equiv sigma_8sqrt{Omega_m}=0.48pm 0.11$. Future cluster surveys may provide opportunities for precise measurements of the sparsity. A sample of a few hundreds clusters with mass estimate errors at a few percent level can provide competitive cosmological parameter constraints complementary to those inferred from other cosmic probes.
Galaxy clusters appear as extended sources in XMM-Newton images, but not all extended sources are clusters. So, their proper classification requires visual inspection with optical images, which is a slow process with biases that are almost impossible to model. We tackle this problem with a novel approach, using convolutional neural networks (CNNs), a state-of-the-art image classification tool, for automatic classification of galaxy cluster candidates. We train the networks on combined XMM-Newton X-ray observations with their optical counterparts from the all-sky Digitized Sky Survey. Our data set originates from the X-CLASS survey sample of galaxy cluster candidates, selected by a specially developed pipeline, the XAmin, tailored for extended source detection and characterisation. Our data set contains 1 707 galaxy cluster candidates classified by experts. Additionally, we create an official Zooniverse citizen science project, The Hunt for Galaxy Clusters, to probe whether citizen volunteers could help in a challenging task of galaxy cluster visual confirmation. The project contained 1 600 galaxy cluster candidates in total of which 404 overlap with the experts sample. The networks were trained on expert and Zooniverse data separately. The CNN test sample contains 85 spectroscopically confirmed clusters and 85 non-clusters that appear in both data sets. Our custom network achieved the best performance in the binary classification of clusters and non-clusters, acquiring accuracy of 90 %, averaged after 10 runs. The results of using CNNs on combined X-ray and optical data for galaxy cluster candidate classification are encouraging and there is a lot of potential for future usage and improvements.
We conducted an X-ray analysis of one of the two Planck-detected triplet-cluster systems, PLCK G334.8-38.0, with a $sim100$~ks deep XMM-Newton data. We find that the system has a redshift of $z=0.37pm{0.01}$ but the precision of the X-ray spectroscopy for two members is too low to rule out a projected triplet system, demanding optical spectroscopy for further investigation. In projection, the system looks almost like an equilateral triangle with an edge length of $sim2.0,mathrm{Mpc}$, but masses are very unevenly distributed ($M_{500} sim [2.5,0.7,0.3] times 10^{14},mathrm{M_{odot}}$ from bright to faint). The brightest member appears to be a relaxed cool-core cluster and is more than twice as massive as both other members combined. The second brightest member appears to be a disturbed non-cool-core cluster and the third member was too faint to make any classification. None of the clusters have an overlapping $R_{500}$ region and no signs of cluster interaction were found; however, the XMM-Newton data alone are probably not sensitive enough to detect such signs, and a joint analysis of X-ray and the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (tSZ) is needed for further investigation, which may also reveal the presence of the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) within the system. The comparison with the other Planck-detected triplet-cluster-system (PLCK G214.6+36.9) shows that they have rather different configurations, suggesting rather different merger scenarios, under the assumption that they are both not simply projected triplet systems.
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