How Baryonic Processes affect Strong Lensing properties of Simulated Galaxy Clusters

TL;DR

This study investigates how different baryonic physics implementations in galaxy cluster simulations influence strong lensing properties, revealing that baryonic effects can significantly alter lensing predictions but do not fully resolve existing observational tensions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of baryonic processes' impact on strong lensing in simulated galaxy clusters across multiple physics models.

Findings

Gas cooling and star formation increase giant arc numbers and Einstein radii.

AGN feedback reduces lensing efficiencies to levels similar to dark matter only simulations.

Baryonic physics alone does not resolve the arc-statistics problem at low redshifts.

Abstract

The observed abundance of giant arcs produced by galaxy cluster lenses and the measured Einstein radii have presented a source of tension for LCDM. Previous cosmological tests for high-redshift clusters (z>0.5) have suffered from small number statistics in the simulated sample and the implementation of baryonic physics is likely to affect the outcome. We analyse zoomed-in simulations of a fairly large sample of cluster-sized objects, with Mvir > 3x10^14 Msun/h, identified at z=0.25 and z=0.5, for a concordance LCDM cosmology. We start with dark matter only simulations, and then add gas hydrodynamics, with different treatments of baryonic processes: non-radiative cooling, radiative cooling with star formation and galactic winds powered by supernova explosions, and finally including the effect of AGN feedback. We find that the addition of gas in non-radiative simulations does not change the strong lensing predictions significantly, but gas cooling and star formation together significantly increase the number of expected giant arcs and the Einstein radii, particularly for lower redshift clusters and lower source redshifts. Further inclusion of AGN feedback reduces the predicted strong lensing efficiencies such that the lensing probability distributions becomes closer to those obtained for simulations including only dark matter. Our results indicate that the inclusion of baryonic physics in simulations will not solve the arc-statistics problem at low redshifts, when the physical processes included provide a realistic description of cooling in the central regions of galaxy clusters. [Abridged]