Two New Catalogues of Superclusters of Abell/ACO Galaxy Clusters out to redshift 0.15

TL;DR

This paper introduces two comprehensive supercluster catalogues based on Abell/ACO galaxy clusters up to redshift 0.15, utilizing a tunable Friends-of-Friends algorithm to identify superclusters across the sky.

Contribution

It presents new all-sky and southern supercluster catalogues with detailed memberships, using an adaptive clustering method and analyzing their multiplicity functions.

Findings

The SSCC contains about twice as many superclusters as MSCC.

Power-law slopes of supercluster multiplicity functions are approximately -2.0 and -1.9.

Observed supercluster distributions differ from cosmological simulation predictions.

Abstract

We present two new catalogues of superclusters of galaxies out to a redshit of z = 0.15, based on the Abell/ACO cluster redshift compilation maintained by one of us (HA). The first of these catalogues, the all-sky Main SuperCluster Catalogue (MSCC), is based on only the rich (A-) Abell clusters, and the second one, the Southern SuperCluster Catalogue (SSCC), covers declinations delta < -17 deg and includes the supplementary Abell S-clusters. A tunable Friends-of-Friends (FoF) algorithm was used to account for the cluster density decreasing with redshift and for different selection functions in distinct areas of the sky. We present the full list of Abell clusters used, together with their redshifts and supercluster memberships and including the isolated clusters. The SSCC contains about twice the number of superclusters than MSCC for delta < -17 deg, which we found to be due to: (1) new superclusters formed by A-clusters in their cores and surrounded by S-clusters (50%), (2) new superclusters formed by S-clusters only (40%), (3) redistribution of member clusters by fragmentation of rich (multiplicity m > 15) superclusters (8%), and (4) new superclusters formed by the connection of A-clusters through bridges of S-clusters (2%). Power-law fits to the cumulative supercluster multiplicity function yield slopes of alpha = -2.0 and alpha = -1.9 for MSCC and SSCC respectively. This power-law behavior is in agreement with the findings for other observational samples of superclusters, but not with that of catalogues based on cosmological simulations.