Cosmological Constraints From Galaxy Clusters in the 2500 Square-Degree SPT-Sz Survey

Abstract

We present cosmological parameter constraints obtained from galaxy clusters identified by their SunyaevZel'dovich effect signature in the 2500 square-degree South Pole Telescope Sunyaev Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) survey. 1We consider the 377 cluster candidates identified at > z 0.25 with a detection significance greater than five, corresponding to the 95% purity threshold for the survey. We compute constraints on cosmological models using the measured cluster abundance as a function of mass and redshift. We include additional constraints from multiwavelength observations, including Chandra X-ray data for 82 clusters and a weak lensing-based prior on the normalization of the mass-observable scaling relations. Assuming a spatially flat ΛCDM cosmology, we combine the cluster data with a prior on H 0 and find s =  0.784 0. . These results are in good agreement with constraints from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from SPT, WMAP, and Planck, as well as with constraints from other cluster data sets. We also consider several extensions to ΛCDM, including models in which the equation of state of dark energy w, the species-summed neutrino mass, and/or the effective number of relativistic species (N eff ) are free parameters. When combined with constraints from the Planck CMB, H 0 , baryon acoustic oscillation, and SNe, adding the SPT cluster data improves the w constraint by 14%, to = - w 1.023 0.042.

Measurements of the Temperature and E-mode Polarization of the CMB from 500 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data

“…Lower values of 8 s have also been inferred by other measurements of large-scale structure, including cosmic shear (e.g., Hildebrandt et al 2017;Joudaki et al 2017), clusters of galaxies (e.g., de Haan et al 2016), redshift space distortions Figure 11. Summary of recent TE measurements (Keck Array and BICEP2 Collaborations et al 2015;Louis et al 2017;Planck Collaboration et al 2016c) with the results of this work.…”

Status of Neutrino Properties and Future Prospects—Cosmological and Astrophysical Constraints

“…Extended catalogs of galaxy clusters have been published in the last decade by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) [86,87], the South Pole Telescope (SPT) [88], and the Planck [24] collaborations. CMB experiments are in fact able to perform searches for galaxy clusters by looking for the thermal SunyaevZeldovich (SZ) effect, the characteristic upward shift in frequency of the CMB signal induced by the inverse-Compton scattering of CMB photons off the hot gas in clusters.…”

The Remarkable Similarity of Massive Galaxy Clusters from z ∼ 0 to z ∼ 1.9

“…These clusters were drawn from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) 2500 deg 2 survey (Bleem et al 2015)and observed to uniform depth with Chandra from 2011 to 2014. These data have advanced our understanding of the evolution of the ICM substantially, allowing detailed evolutionary studies ofICM cooling in cluster cores (Semler et al 2012;McDonald et al 2013),average entropy and pressure profiles (McDonald et al 2014), AGN feedback (Hlavacek-Larrondo et al 2015), ICM metallicity , and ICM morphology (Nurgaliev et al 2017)while also providing tight constraints on the amount and distribution of matter in the universe (Bocquet et al 2015;Chiu et al 2016;de Haan et al 2016). These studies benefit from the unique combination of the SPT selection function, which is roughly independent of both redshift (e.g., Bleem et al 2015) and the dynamical state of the cluster (e.g., Nurgaliev et al 2017;Sifón et al 2016), and uniform-depth Chandra follow-up, meaning that each cluster was observed for sufficient time to collect ∼1500-2000 X-ray photons.…”

“…In particular, X-ray observations of galaxy clusters, which probe the hot (10 7 K) intracluster medium (ICM), lead to an understanding of cluster-cluster mergers, the most energetic phenomena in the universe (e.g., Markevitch et al 2002;Sarazin 2002);allow detailed studies of the effects of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) on large scales (see reviews by Fabian 2012;McNamara & Nulsen 2012);and provide some of the tightest constraints on the amount and distribution of matter in our universe (e.g., Mantz et al 2010;de Haan et al 2016). The cores of galaxy clusters represent one of the least understood regimes outside of our galaxy (see review by Kravtsov & Borgani 2012), with runaway cooling of the hot ICM (e.g., Fabian 1994;McDonald et al 2012)seemingly beingheld in check by frequent outbursts of AGN feedback (e.g., Rafferty et al 2008;Hlavacek-Larrondo et al 2015)-a phenomenon that simulations are only recently beginning to reproduce (e.g., Gaspari et al 2011Gaspari et al , 2017Prasad et al 2015).…”