No Arabic abstract
We analyse the structures of all the clusters in the DAFT/FADA survey for which XMM-Newton and/or a sufficient number of galaxy redshifts in the cluster range is available, with the aim of detecting substructures and evidence for merging events. These properties are discussed in the framework of standard cold dark matter cosmology.XMM-Newton data were available for 32 clusters, for which we derive the X-ray luminosity and a global X-ray temperature for 25 of them. For 23 clusters we were able to fit the X-ray emissivity with a beta-model and subtract it to detect substructures in the X-ray gas. A dynamical analysis based on the SG method was applied to the clusters having at least 15 spectroscopic galaxy redshifts in the cluster range: 18 X-ray clusters and 11 clusters with no X-ray data. Only major substructures will be detected. Ten substructures were detected both in X-rays and by the SG method. Most of the substructures detected both in X-rays and with the SG method are probably at their first cluster pericentre approach and are relatively recent infalls. We also find hints of a decreasing X-ray gas density profile core radius with redshift. The percentage of mass included in substructures was found to be roughly constant with redshift with values of 5-15%, in agreement both with the general CDM framework and with the results of numerical simulations. Galaxies in substructures show the same general behaviour as regular cluster galaxies; however, in substructures, there is a deficiency of both late type and old stellar population galaxies. Late type galaxies with recent bursts of star formation seem to be missing in the substructures close to the bottom of the host cluster potential well. However, our sample would need to be increased to allow a more robust analysis.
We compute optical galaxy luminosity functions (GLFs) in the B, V, R, and I rest-frame bands for one of the largest medium-to-high-redshift (0.4 < z < 0.9) cluster samples to date in order to probe the abundance of faint galaxies in clusters. We also study how the GLFs depend on cluster redshift, mass, and substructure, and compare the GLFs of clusters with those of the field. We separately investigate the GLFs of blue and red-sequence (RS) galaxies to understand the evolution of different cluster populations. We find that the shapes of our GLFs are similar for the B, V, R, and I bands with a drop at the red GLF faint end that is more pronounced at high-redshift: alpha(red) ~ -0.5 at 0.40 < z < 0.65 and alpha(red) > 0.1 at 0.65 < z < 0.90. The blue GLFs have a steeper faint end (alpha(blue) ~ -1.6) than the red GLFs, that appears to be independent of redshift. For the full cluster sample, blue and red GLFs intersect at M(V) = -20, M(R) = -20.5, and M(I) = -20.3. A study of how galaxy types evolve with redshift shows that late type galaxies appear to become early types between z ~ 0.9 and today. Finally, the faint ends of the red GLFs of more massive clusters appear to be richer than less massive clusters, which is more typical of the lower redshift behaviour. Our results indicate that our clusters form at redshifts higher than z = 0.9 from galaxy structures that already have an established red sequence. Late type galaxies then appear to evolve into early types, enriching the red-sequence between this redshift and today. This effect is consistent with the evolution of the faint end slope of the red-sequence and the galaxy type evolution that we find. Finally, faint galaxies accreted from the field environment at all redshifts might have replaced the blue late type galaxies that converted into early types, explaining the lack of evolution in the faint end slopes of the blue GLFs.
While our current cosmological model places galaxy clusters at the nodes of a filament network (the cosmic web), we still struggle to detect these filaments at high redshifts. We perform a weak lensing study for a sample of 16 massive, medium-high redshift (0.4<z<0.9) galaxy clusters from the DAFT/FADA survey, that are imaged in at least three optical bands with Subaru/Suprime-Cam or CFHT/MegaCam. We estimate the cluster masses using an NFW fit to the shear profile measured in a KSB-like method, adding our contribution to the calibration of the observable-mass relation required for cluster abundance cosmological studies. We compute convergence maps and select structures within, securing their detection with noise re-sampling techniques. Taking advantage of the large field of view of our data, we study cluster environment, adding information from galaxy density maps at the cluster redshift and from X-ray images when available. We find that clusters show a large variety of weak lensing maps at large scales and that they may all be embedded in filamentary structures at megaparsec scale. We classify them in three categories according to the smoothness of their weak lensing contours and to the amount of substructures: relaxed (~7%), past mergers (~21.5%), recent or present mergers (~71.5%). The fraction of clusters undergoing merging events observationally supports the hierarchical scenario of cluster growth, and implies that massive clusters are strongly evolving at the studied redshifts. Finally, we report the detection of unusually elongated structures in CLJ0152, MACSJ0454, MACSJ0717, A851, BMW1226, MACSJ1621, and MS1621.
As a contribution to the understanding of the dark energy concept, the Dark energy American French Team (DAFT, in French FADA) has started a large project to characterize statistically high redshift galaxy clusters, infer cosmological constraints from Weak Lensing Tomography, and understand biases relevant for constraining dark energy and cluster physics in future cluster and cosmological experiments. The purpose of this paper is to establish the basis of reference for the photo-z determination used in all our subsequent papers, including weak lensing tomography studies. This project is based on a sample of 91 high redshift (z>0.4), massive clusters with existing HST imaging, for which we are presently performing complementary multi-wavelength imaging. This allows us in particular to estimate spectral types and determine accurate photometric redshifts for galaxies along the lines of sight to the first ten clusters for which all the required data are available down to a limit of I_AB=24/24.5 with the LePhare software. The accuracy in redshift is of the order of 0.05 for the range 0.2<z<1.5. We verified that the technique applied to obtain photometric redshifts works well by comparing our results to with previous works. In clusters, photoz accuracy is degraded for bright absolute magnitudes and for the latest and earliest type galaxies. The photoz accuracy also only slightly varies as a function of the spectral type for field galaxies. As a consequence, we find evidence for an environmental dependence of the photoz accuracy, interpreted as the standard used Spectral Energy Distributions being not very well suited to cluster galaxies. Finally, we modeled the LCDCS 0504 mass with the strong arcs detected along this line of sight.
Supernova (SN) rates are potentially powerful diagnostics of metal enrichment and SN physics, particularly in galaxy clusters with their deep, metal-retaining potentials and relatively simple star-formation histories. We have carried out a survey for supernovae (SNe) in galaxy clusters, at a redshift range 0.5<z<0.9, using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space Telescope. We reimaged a sample of 15 clusters that were previously imaged by ACS, thus obtaining two to three epochs per cluster, in which we discovered five likely cluster SNe, six possible cluster SNe Ia, two hostless SN candidates, and several background and foreground events. Keck spectra of the host galaxies were obtained to establish cluster membership. We conducted detailed efficiency simulations, and measured the stellar luminosities of the clusters using Subaru images. We derive a cluster SN rate of 0.35 SNuB +0.17/-0.12 (statistical) pm0.13 (classification) pm0.01 (systematic) [where SNuB = SNe (100 yr 10^10 L_B_sun)^-1] and 0.112 SNuM +0.055/-0.039 (statistical) pm0.042 (classification) pm0.005 (systematic) [where SNuM = SNe (100 yr 10^10 M_sun)^-1]. As in previous measurements of cluster SN rates, the uncertainties are dominated by small-number statistics. The SN rate in this redshift bin is consistent with the SN rate in clusters at lower redshifts (to within the uncertainties), and shows that there is, at most, only a slight increase of cluster SN rate with increasing redshift. The low and fairly constant SN Ia rate out to z~1 implies that the bulk of the iron mass in clusters was already in place by z~1. The recently observed doubling of iron abundances in the intracluster medium between z=1 and 0, if real, is likely the result of redistribution of existing iron, rather than new production of iron.
We investigate the relationship between star formation (SF) and substructure in a sample of 107 nearby galaxy clusters using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Several past studies of individual galaxy clusters have suggested that cluster mergers enhance cluster SF, while others find no such relationship. The SF fraction in multi-component clusters (0.228 +/- 0.007) is higher than that in single-component clusters (0.175 +/- 0.016) for galaxies with M^0.1_r < -20.5. In both single- and multi-component clusters, the fraction of star-forming galaxies increases with clustercentric distance and decreases with local galaxy number density, and multi-component clusters show a higher SF fraction than single-component clusters at almost all clustercentric distances and local densities. Comparing the SF fraction in individual clusters to several statistical measures of substructure, we find weak, but in most cases significant at greater than 2 sigma, correlations between substructure and SF fraction. These results could indicate that cluster mergers may cause weak but significant SF enhancement in clusters, or unrelaxed clusters exhibit slightly stronger SF due to their less evolved states relative to relaxed clusters.