Testing for evolution in scaling relations of galaxy clusters: Cross analysis between X-ray and SZ observations

TL;DR

This study predicts Sunyaev-Zeldovich signals for X-ray galaxy clusters using different scaling laws and demonstrates SZ measurements' potential to constrain the thermal history of intra-cluster gas, despite some biases.

Contribution

It introduces a method to differentiate between evolving and non-evolving cluster scaling relations using SZ observations and MCMC analysis.

Findings

Evolving and non-evolving models can be distinguished via SZ data.

SZ measurements effectively constrain the thermal history of intra-cluster gas.

Selection effects bias the measurement of evolution parameters at high SZ thresholds.

Abstract

We present predicted Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) properties of known X-ray clusters of galaxies for which gas temperature measurements are available. The reference sample was compiled from the BAX database for X-ray clusters. The Sunyaev-Zeldovich signal is predicted according to two different scaling laws for the mass-temperature relation in clusters: a standard relation and an evolving relation that reproduces well the evolution of the X-ray temperature distribution function in a concordance cosmology. Using a Markov Chain Mote Carlo (MCMC) analysis we examine the values of the recovered parameters and their uncertainties. The evolving case can be clearly distinguished from the non-evolving case, showing that SZ measurements will indeed be efficient in constraining the thermal history of the intra-cluster gas. However, significant bias appears in the measured values of the evolution parameter for high SZ threshold owing to selection effects.