Publication Details

AFRICAN RESEARCH NEXUS

SHINING A SPOTLIGHT ON AFRICAN RESEARCH

earth and planetary sciences

Scaling relations and overabundance of massive clusters at z ≳ 1 from weak-lensing studies with the hubble space telescope

Astrophysical Journal, Volume 737, No. 2, Article 59, Year 2011

We present weak gravitational lensing analysis of 22 high-redshift (z ≳ 1) clusters based on Hubble Space Telescope images. Most clusters in our sample provide significant lensing signals and are well detected in their reconstructed two-dimensional mass maps. Combining the current results and our previous weak-lensing studies of five other high-z clusters, we compare gravitational lensing masses of these clusters with other observables. We revisit the question whether the presence of the most massive clusters in our sample is in tension with the current ΛCDM structure formation paradigm. We find that the lensing masses are tightly correlated with the gas temperatures and establish, for the first time, the lensing mass-temperature relation at z ≳ 1. For the power-law slope of the M-TX relation (M ∝ Tα), we obtain α = 1.54 ± 0.23. This is consistent with the theoretical self-similar prediction α = 3/2 and with the results previously reported in the literature for much lower redshift samples. However, our normalization is lower than the previous results by 20%-30%, indicating that the normalization in the M-TX relation might evolve. After correcting for Eddington bias and updating the discovery area with a more conservative choice, we find that the existence of the most massive clusters in our sample still provides a tension with the current ΛCDM model. The combined probability of finding the four most massive clusters in this sample after the marginalization over cosmological parameters is less than 1%. © 2011 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

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Citations: 102
Authors: 19
Affiliations: 16
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