Constraining the Scatter in the Mass-Richness Relation of maxBCG Clusters With Weak Lensing and X-ray Data

TL;DR

This study constrains the scatter in the mass-richness relation of galaxy clusters using weak lensing and X-ray data, providing new insights into cluster mass estimation and cosmology.

Contribution

It offers the first observational constraint on the correlation coefficient between X-ray luminosity and mass at fixed richness.

Findings

Measured the scatter in mass at fixed richness as approximately 0.45.

Established a lower limit of 0.85 on the correlation coefficient between X-ray luminosity and mass.

Produced a state-of-the-art estimate of the halo mass function at z=0.23.

Abstract

We measure the logarithmic scatter in mass at fixed richness for clusters in the maxBCG cluster catalog, an optically selected cluster sample drawn from SDSS imaging data. Our measurement is achieved by demanding consistency between available weak lensing and X-ray measurements of the maxBCG clusters, and the X-ray luminosity--mass relation inferred from the 400d X-ray cluster survey, a flux limited X-ray cluster survey. We find \sigma_{\ln M|N_{200}}=0.45^{+0.20}_{-0.18} (95% CL) at N_{200} ~ 40, where N_{200} is the number of red sequence galaxies in a cluster. As a byproduct of our analysis, we also obtain a constraint on the correlation coefficient between \ln Lx and \ln M at fixed richness, which is best expressed as a lower limit, r_{L,M|N} >= 0.85 (95% CL). This is the first observational constraint placed on a correlation coefficient involving two different cluster mass tracers. We use our results to produce a state of the art estimate of the halo mass function at z=0.23 -- the median redshift of the maxBCG cluster sample -- and find that it is consistent with the WMAP5 cosmology. Both the mass function data and its covariance matrix are presented.