The Relative Abundance of Isolated Clusters as a Probe of Dark Energy

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the relative abundance of isolated galaxy clusters can serve as a probe for dark energy, using modified theoretical models and simulations to understand its dependence on the dark energy equation of state.

Contribution

It introduces a modified Corasaniti-Achitouv theory to evaluate the mass function of isolated clusters and demonstrates how their relative abundance can constrain dark energy properties.

Findings

The CA mass function with D_B=0 fits simulation data well across redshifts.

The relative abundance of isolated clusters varies significantly with dark energy parameters.

xi_I can help break degeneracies in cosmological parameter estimation.

Abstract

Those galaxy clusters which do not belong to the superclusters are referred to as the isolated clusters. Their relative abundance at a given epoch may be a powerful constraint of the dark energy equation of state since it depends strongly on how fast the structures grow on the largest scale in the Universe. We note that the mass function of the isolated clusters can be separately evaluated through the modification of the recently developed Corasaniti-Achitouv (CA) theory according to which the stochastic collapse barrier is quantified by two coefficients: the drifting average coefficient (\beta) and the diffusion coefficient (D_B). Regarding $\beta$ in the CA formalism as an adjustable parameter and assuming that the formation of isolated clusters corresponds to the case of D_B=0, we determine the mass function of the isolated clusters by fitting the numerical results from the MICE simulations to the modified CA formula. It is found that the best-fit value of beta changes with redshift and that the CA mass function with D_B=0 agrees very well with the numerical results at various redshifts. Defining the relative abundance of the isolated clusters, xi_I, as the ratio of the cumulative mass function of the isolated clusters to that of the non-isolated clusters at a given epoch, we finally show how sensitively xi_I changes with the dark energy equation of state. It is also discussed how xi_I can help to break the degeneracy between the dark energy equation of state and the other key cosmological parameters.