Testing Sunyaev-Zel'dovich measurements of the hot gas content of dark matter haloes using synthetic skies

TL;DR

This study uses synthetic skies from hydrodynamical simulations to test the robustness of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich measurements of hot gas in dark matter haloes, revealing biases in previous interpretations and supporting a non-self-similar gas distribution.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the inferred hot gas content within haloes is highly sensitive to pressure assumptions and shows that realistic simulations align with observed tSZ flux-mass relations, challenging prior self-similar models.

Findings

Bias in tSZ flux within r500 can be up to an order of magnitude for low-mass haloes.

Total tSZ flux estimates are robust, but within r500 they are sensitive to pressure distribution assumptions.

Simulations with AGN feedback match observed tSZ flux-mass relations, unlike self-similar models.

Abstract

The thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect offers a means of probing the hot gas in and around massive galaxies and galaxy groups and clusters, which is thought to constitute a large fraction of the baryon content of the Universe. The Planck collaboration recently performed a stacking analysis of a large sample of `locally brightest galaxies' (LBGs) and, surprisingly, inferred an approximately self-similar relation between the tSZ flux and halo mass. At face value, this implies that the hot gas mass fraction is independent of halo mass, a result which is in apparent conflict with resolved X-ray observations. We test the robustness of the inferred trend using synthetic tSZ maps generated from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations and using the same tools and assumptions applied in the Planck study. We show that, while the detection and the estimate of the `total' flux (within $5 r_{500}$) is reasonably robust, the inferred flux originating from within $r_{500}$ (i.e. the limiting radius to which X-ray observations typically probe) is highly sensitive to the assumed pressure distribution of the gas. Using our most realistic simulations with AGN feedback, that reproduce a wide variety of X-ray and optical properties of groups and clusters, we estimate that the derived tSZ flux within $r_{500}$ is biased high by up to to an order of magnitude for haloes with masses $M_{500} \sim 10^{13}$ M$_{\odot}$. Moreover, we show that the AGN simulations are consistent with the total tSZ flux-mass relation observed with Planck, whereas a self-similar model is ruled out.