Southern Cosmology Survey I: Optical Cluster Detections and Predictions for the Southern Common-Area Millimeter-Wave Experiments

TL;DR

This paper reports the first optical cluster detections from the Southern Cosmology Survey, providing data, analysis pipeline, and predictions for Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect signals to aid upcoming mm-wave observations.

Contribution

It introduces a new multiwavelength survey, an analysis pipeline for optical cluster detection, and provides the first optical properties and SZE predictions for clusters in the southern sky.

Findings

Detected 8 new optically-selected clusters with masses > 3x10^14 M_sun

Provided photometric redshifts, richness, luminosities, and mass estimates

Predicted SZE signals for upcoming mm-wave observations

Abstract

We present first results from the Southern Cosmology Survey, a new multiwavelength survey of the southern sky coordinated with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), a recently commissioned ground-based mm-band Cosmic Microwave Background experiment. This article presents a full analysis of archival optical multi-band imaging data covering an 8 square degree region near right ascension 23 hours and declination -55 degrees, obtained by the Blanco 4-m telescope and Mosaic-II camera in late 2005. We describe the pipeline we have developed to process this large data volume, obtain accurate photometric redshifts, and detect optical clusters. Our cluster finding process uses the combination of a matched spatial filter, photometric redshift probability distributions and richness estimation. We present photometric redshifts, richness estimates, luminosities, and masses for 8 new optically-selected clusters with mass greater than $3\times10^{14}M_{\sun}$ at redshifts out to 0.7. We also present estimates for the expected Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) signal from these clusters as specific predictions for upcoming observations by ACT, the South Pole Telescope and Atacama Pathfinder Experiment.