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Register a new userOptical follow-up study of 32 high-redshift galaxy cluster candidates from Planck with the William Herschel Telescope
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Hannah Zohren
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The Planck satellite has detected cluster candidates via the Sunyaev Zeldovich (SZ) effect, but the optical follow-up required to confirm these candidates is still incomplete, especially at high redshifts and for SZ detections at low significance. In this work we present our analysis of optical observations obtained for 32 Planck cluster candidates using ACAM on the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope. These cluster candidates were preselected using SDSS, WISE, and Pan-STARRS images to likely represent distant clusters at redshifts $z gtrsim 0.7$. We obtain photometric redshift and richness estimates for all of the cluster candidates from a red-sequence analysis of $r$-, $i$-, and $z$-band imaging data. In addition, long-slit observations allow us to measure the redshifts of a subset of the clusters spectroscopically. The optical richness is often lower than expected from the inferred SZ mass when compared to scaling relations previously calibrated at low redshifts. This likely indicates the impact of Eddington bias and projection effects or noise-induced detections, especially at low SZ-significance. Thus, optical follow-up not only provides redshift measurements, but also an important independent verification method. We find that 18 (7) of the candidates at redshifts $z > 0.5$ ($z > 0.8$) are at least half as rich as expected from scaling relations, thereby clearly confirming these candidates as massive clusters. While the complex selection function of our sample due to our preselection hampers its use for cosmological studies, we do provide a validation of massive high-redshift clusters particularly suitable for further astrophysical investigations.
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We present CARMA observations of the three northern unconfirmed galaxy clusters discovered by the PLANCK satellite. We confirm the existence of two massive clusters (PLCKESZ G115.71+17.52 and PLCKESZ G121.11+57.01) at high significance. For these clusters, we present refined centroid locations from the 31 GHz CARMA data, as well as mass estimates obtained from a joint analysis of CARMA and PLANCK data. We do not detect the third candidate, PLCKESZ G189.84-37.24, and place an upper limit on its mass of M500 < 3.2 X 10^(14) M_SUN at 68% confidence. Considering our data and the characteristics of the PLANCK Early Release SZ Catalog, we conclude that this object is likely to be a cold-core object in the plane of our Galaxy. As a result, we estimate the purity of the ESZ Catalog to be greater than 99.5%.
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We characterise the distribution of quasars within dark matter halos using a direct measurement technique for the first time at redshifts as high as $z sim 1$. Using the Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) catalogue for galaxy groups and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR12 quasar dataset, we assign host clusters/groups to the quasars and make a measurement of the mean number of quasars within dark matter halos as a function of halo mass. We find that a simple power-law fit of $logleft <Nright> = (2.11 pm 0.01) log (M) -(32.77 pm 0.11)$ can be used to model the quasar fraction in dark matter halos. This suggests that the quasar fraction increases monotonically as a function of halo mass even to redshifts as high as $zsim 1$.
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