Galaxy cluster scaling relations measured with APEX-SZ [CEA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7103


We present thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (SZE) measurements for 42 galaxy clusters observed at 150 GHz with the APEX-SZ experiment. For each cluster, we model the pressure profile and calculate the integrated Comptonization $Y$ to estimate the total thermal energy of the intracluster medium (ICM). We compare the measured $Y$ values to X-ray observables of the ICM from the literature (cluster gas mass $M_{gas}$, temperature $T_X$, and $Y_X =M_{gas}T_X$) that relate to total cluster mass. We measure power law scaling relations, including an intrinsic scatter, between the SZE and X-ray observables for both the X-ray selected and uniform REFLEX-DXL cluster sample and the full ad hoc APEX-SZ sample. We observe that the lack of uniform X-ray analysis for the full cluster sample introduces significant variability into the measured scaling relations and dominates the level of intrinsic scatter. For the REFLEX-DXL sample, we find results consistent with a self-similar model of cluster evolution dominated by gravitational effects. Comparing to predictions from numerical simulations, these scaling relations prefer models that include cooling and feedback in the ICM. Lastly, we find that the $Y-Y_X$ scaling relation has the lowest measured intrinsic scatter.

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A. Bender, J. Kennedy, P. Ade, et. al.
Tue, 29 Apr 14
24/69