Unveiling the 3D temperature structure of galaxy clusters by means of the thermal SZ effect

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method to analyze the three-dimensional temperature structure of galaxy clusters using the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, especially focusing on merging clusters and shock wave detection.

Contribution

It presents new techniques to derive 3D temperature variations and identify merger shock waves from SZ effect data, overcoming limitations of spherical symmetry assumptions.

Findings

Method to derive line-of-sight temperature variance

Ability to detect merger shock waves

Enhanced understanding of cluster temperature inhomogeneities

Abstract

The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (hereafter SZ) effect is a promising tool to derive the gas temperature of galaxy clusters. The approximation of a spherically symmetric gas distribution is usually used to determine the temperature structure of galaxy clusters, but this approximation cannot properly describe merging galaxy clusters. The methods used so far, which do not assume the spherically symmetric distribution, permit us to derive 2D temperature maps of merging galaxy clusters. In this paper, we propose a method to derive the standard temperature deviation and temperature variance along the line-of-sight, which permits us to analyze the 3D temperature structure of galaxy clusters by means of the thermal SZ effect. We also propose a method to reveal merger shock waves in galaxy clusters by analyzing the presence of temperature inhomogeneities along the line-of-sight.