Comparison of Pressure Profiles of Massive Relaxed Galaxy Clusters using Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and X-ray Data

TL;DR

This study compares pressure profiles of 25 massive relaxed galaxy clusters using Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and X-ray data, confirming their consistency and validating the use of these methods for cluster mass estimation.

Contribution

It introduces a joint analysis method applying Bulbul's intra-cluster medium model to both SZ and X-ray data, demonstrating their consistent pressure measurements.

Findings

X-ray and SZ integrated pressures are consistent.

Pressure profiles agree with the universal profile out to r500.

Results align with WMAP and Planck data findings.

Abstract

We present Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect observations of a sample of 25 massive relaxed galaxy clusters observed with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Array (SZA), an 8-element interferometer that is part of the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA). We perform an analysis of new SZA data and archival Chandra observations of this sample to investigate the integrated pressure -- a proxy for cluster mass -- determined from X-ray and SZ observations, two independent probes of the intra-cluster medium. This analysis makes use of a model for the intra-cluster medium introduced by Bulbul (2010) which can be applied simultaneously to SZ and X-ray data. With this model, we estimate the pressure profile for each cluster using a joint analysis of the SZ and X-ray data, and using the SZ data alone. We find that the integrated pressures measured from X-ray and SZ data are consistent. This conclusion is in agreement with recent results obtained using WMAP and Planck data, confirming that SZ and X-ray observations of massive clusters detect the same amount of thermal pressure from the intra-cluster medium. To test for possible biases introduced by our choice of model, we also fit the SZ data using the universal pressure profile proposed by Arnaud (2010), and find consistency between the two models out to r500 in the pressure profiles and integrated pressures.