The ROSAT-ESO Flux-Limited X-Ray (REFLEX) galaxy cluster survey

Abstract

Abstract. We present a measure of the power spectrum on scales from 15 to 800 h −1 Mpc using the ROSAT-ESO Flux-Limited X-Ray (REFLEX) galaxy cluster catalogue. The REFLEX survey provides a sample of the 452 X-ray brightest southern clusters of galaxies with the nominal flux limit S = 3.0 10 −12 erg s −1 cm −2 for the ROSAT energy band (0.1 − 2.4) keV. Several tests are performed showing no significant incompletenesses of the REFLEX clusters with X-ray luminosities brighter than 10 43 erg s −1 up to scales of about 800 h −1 Mpc. They also indicate that cosmic variance might be more important than previous studies suggest. We regard this as a warning not to draw general cosmological conclusions from cluster samples with a size smaller than REFLEX. Power spectra, P (k), of comoving cluster number densities are estimated for flux-and volume-limited subsamples. The most important result is the detection of a broad maximum within the comoving wavenumber range 0.022 ≤ k ≤ 0.030 h Mpc −1 . The data suggest an increase of the power spectral amplitude with X-ray luminosity. Compared to optically selected cluster samples the REFLEX P (k) is flatter for wavenumbers k ≤ 0.05 h Mpc −1 thus shifting the maximum of P (k) to larger scales. The smooth maximum is not consistent with the narrow peak detected at k = 0.05 h Mpc −1 using the Abell/ACO richness ≥0 data. In the range 0.02 ≤ k ≤ 0.4 h Mpc −1 general agreement is found between the slope of the REFLEX P (k) and those obtained with optically selected galaxies. A semi-analytic description of the biased nonlinear power spectrum in redshift space gives the best agreement for low-density Cold Dark Matter models with or without a cosmological constant.

The extended ROSAT-ESO flux limited X-ray galaxy cluster survey (REFLEX II) II. Construction and properties of the survey

“…So far the largest, A&A 555, A30 (2013) high-quality sample of X-ray selected galaxy clusters is provided by the REFLEX Cluster Survey (Böhringer et al 2001(Böhringer et al , 2004 based on the southern extragalatic sky of RASS at declination ≤2.5 degree. The quality of the sample has been demonstrated by showing that it can provide reliable measures of the large-scale structure (Collins et al 2000;Schuecker et al 2001a;Kerscher et al 2001), yielding cosmological parameters (Schuecker et al 2003a,b;2011) in good agreement within the measurement uncertainties with the subsequently published WMAP results (Komatsu et al 2011). The REFLEX data have also been used to study the galaxy velocity dispersion − X-ray luminosity relation (Ortiz-Gil et al 2004), the statistics of Minkowski functionals in the cluster distribution (Kerscher et al 2001), and to select statistically well defined subsamples like the HIFLUGCS (Reiprich & Böhringer 2002) and REXCESS (Böhringer et al 2007).…”

The REFLEX galaxy cluster survey

“…Strong indications for a low cosmic matter density come from, e.g., the abundance of galaxy clusters (e.g., Carlberg et al 1996;Viana & Liddle 1996;Bahcall & Fan 1998;Eke et al 1998;Henry 2000;Reiprich & Böhringer 2002, hereafter RB02), and from the large-scale distribution of clusters (e.g. Collins et al 2000;Schuecker et al 2001, hereafter Paper I) and galaxies (e.g., Percival et al 2001;Szalay et al 2001). A recent overview including also new results on gravitational dynamics, weak lensing and the baryon mass fraction in clusters of galaxies can be found in Peebles & Ratra (2002).…”

Untitled

“…559 been conÐrmed by Miller, Nichol, & Batuski (2001) in their analysis of power spectra of Abell and APM clusters of galaxies, as well as PSCz galaxies. Note, however, that there are no such features in the recent REFLEX X-ray cluster survey (Schuecker et al 2001). Certainly, both HDL and HDB are nonÈscale-invariant spectra.…”