Halo Mass-Concentration Relation at High-Mass End

The concentration-mass (c-M) relation encodes the key information of the assembly history of the dark matter halos, however its behavior at the high mass end has not been measured precisely in observations yet. In this paper, we report the measurement of halo c-M relation with galaxy-galaxy lensing method, using shear catalog of the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS) Data Release 8, which covers a sky area of 9500 deg^2. The foreground lenses are selected from redMaPPer, LOWZ, and CMASS catalogs, with halo mass range from 10^{13} to 10^{15} M_sun and redshift range from z=0.08 to z=0.65. We find that the concentration decreases with the halo mass from 10^{13} to 10^{14} M_sun, but shows a trend of upturn after the pivot point of ~10^{14} M_sun. We fit the measured c-M relation with the concentration model c(M)=C_0 (M/(10^{12} M_sun/h)^{-gamma} [1+(M/M_0)^{0.4}], and get the values (C_0, gamma, log(M_0) = (5.119_{-0.185}^{0.183}, 0.205_{-0.010}^{0.010}, 14.083_{-0.133}^{0.130}), and (4.875_{-0.208}^{0.209}, 0.221_{-0.010}^{0.010}, 13.750_{-0.141}^{0.142}) for halos with 0.08<=z<0.35 and 0.35<=z<0.65, respectively. We also show that the model including an upturn is favored over a simple power-law model. Our measurement provides important information for the recent argument of massive cluster formation process.

Does Concentration Drive the Scatter in the Stellar-to-Halo Mass Relation of Galaxy Clusters?

Concentration is one of the key dark matter halo properties that could drive the scatter in the stellar-to-halo mass relation of massive clusters. We derive robust photometric stellar masses for a sample of brightest central galaxies (BCGs) in SDSS redMaPPer clusters at $0.17<z<0.3$, and split the clusters into two equal-halo mass subsamples by their BCG stellar mass $M_*$. The weak lensing profiles $DeltaSigma$ of the two cluster subsamples exhibit different slopes on scales below 1 M$pc/h$. To interpret such discrepancy, we perform a comprehensive Bayesian modelling of the two $DeltaSigma$ profiles by including different levels of miscentring effects between the two subsamples as informed by X-ray observations. We find that the two subsamples have the same average halo mass of $1.74 times 10^{14} M_{odot}/h$, but the concentration of the low-$M_*$ clusters is $5.87_{-0.60}^{+0.77}$, ${sim}1.5sigma$ smaller than that of their high-$M_*$ counterparts~($6.95_{-0.66}^{+0.78}$). Furthermore, both cluster weak lensing and cluster-galaxy cross-correlations indicate that the large-scale bias of the low-$M_*$, low-concentration clusters are ${sim}10%$ higher than that of the high-$M_*$, high-concentration systems, hence possible evidence of the cluster assembly bias effect. Our results reveal a remarkable physical connection between the stellar mass within 20{-}30 k$pc/h$, the dark matter mass within ${sim}$ 200 k$pc/h$, and the cosmic overdensity on scales above 10 M$pc/h$, enabling a key observational test of theories of co-evolution between massive clusters and their central galaxies.

KiDS-450: Cosmological Constraints from Weak Lensing Peak Statistics-I: Inference from Analytical Prediction of High Signal-to-Noise Ratio Convergence Peaks

This paper is the first of a series of papers constraining cosmological parameters with weak lensing peak statistics using $sim 450~rm deg^2$ of imaging data from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS-450). We measure high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR: $ u$) weak lensing convergence peaks in the range of $3< u<5$, and employ theoretical models to derive expected values. These models are validated using a suite of simulations. We take into account two major systematic effects, the boost factor and the effect of baryons on the mass-concentration relation of dark matter haloes. In addition, we investigate the impacts of other potential astrophysical systematics including the projection effects of large scale structures, intrinsic galaxy alignments, as well as residual measurement uncertainties in the shear and redshift calibration. Assuming a flat $Lambda$CDM model, we find constraints for $S_{rm 8}=sigma_{rm 8}(Omega_{rm m}/0.3)^{0.5}=0.746^{+0.046}_{-0.107}$ according to the degeneracy direction of the cosmic shear analysis and $Sigma_{rm 8}=sigma_{rm 8}(Omega_{rm m}/0.3)^{0.38}=0.696^{+0.048}_{-0.050}$ based on the derived degeneracy direction of our high-SNR peak statistics. The difference between the power index of $S_{rm 8}$ and in $Sigma_{rm 8}$ indicates that combining the two probes has the potential to break the degeneracy in $sigma_{rm 8}$ and $Omega_{rm m}$. Our results are consistent with the cosmic shear tomographic correlation analysis of the same dataset and $sim 2sigma$ lower than the Planck 2016 results.

Warm-hot baryons comprise 5-10 per cent of filaments in the cosmic web

Observations of the cosmic microwave background indicate that baryons account for 5% of the Universes total energy content. In the local Universe, the census of all observed baryons falls short of this estimate by a factor of two. Cosmological simulations indicate that the missing baryons might not have condensed into virialized haloes, but reside throughout the filaments of the cosmic web (where matter density is larger than average) as a low-density plasma at temperatures of $10^5-10^7$ kelvin, known as the warm-hot intergalactic medium. There have been previous claims of the detection of warm baryons along the line of sight to distant blazars and of hot gas between interacting clusters. These observations were, however, unable to trace the large-scale filamentary structure, or to estimate the total amount of warm baryons in a representative volume of the Universe. Here we report X-ray observations of filamentary structures of gas at $10^7$ kelvin associated with the galaxy cluster Abell 2744. Previous observations of this cluster were unable to resolve and remove coincidental X-ray point sources. After subtracting these, we reveal hot gas structures that are coherent over scales of 8 mergaparsecs. The filaments coincide with over-densities of galaxies and dark matter, with 5-10% of their mass in baryonic gas. This gas has been heated up by the clusters gravitational pull and is now feeding its core. Our findings strengthen evidence for a picture of the Universe in which a large fraction of the missing baryons reside in the filaments of the cosmic web.