We perform a joint analysis of X-ray and Sunyaev Zeldovich (SZ) effect data using an analytic model that describes the gas properties of galaxy clusters. The joint analysis allows the measurement of the cluster gas mass fraction profile and Hubble co
nstant independent of cosmological parameters. Weak cosmological priors are used to calculate the overdensity radius within which the gas mass fractions are reported. Such an analysis can provide direct constraints on the evolution of the cluster gas mass fraction with redshift. We validate the model and the joint analysis on high signal-to-noise data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Array for two clusters, Abell 2631 and Abell 2204.
We present Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) effect observations of a sample of 25 massive relaxed galaxy clusters observed with the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Array (SZA), an 8-element interferometer that is part of the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave As
tronomy (CARMA). We perform an analysis of new SZA data and archival Chandra observations of this sample to investigate the integrated pressure -- a proxy for cluster mass -- determined from X-ray and SZ observations, two independent probes of the intra-cluster medium. This analysis makes use of a model for the intra-cluster medium introduced by Bulbul (2010) which can be applied simultaneously to SZ and X-ray data. With this model, we estimate the pressure profile for each cluster using a joint analysis of the SZ and X-ray data, and using the SZ data alone. We find that the integrated pressures measured from X-ray and SZ data are consistent. This conclusion is in agreement with recent results obtained using WMAP and Planck data, confirming that SZ and X-ray observations of massive clusters detect the same amount of thermal pressure from the intra-cluster medium. To test for possible biases introduced by our choice of model, we also fit the SZ data using the universal pressure profile proposed by Arnaud (2010), and find consistency between the two models out to r500 in the pressure profiles and integrated pressures.
