Characterising large-scale structure with the REFLEX II cluster survey

TL;DR

This paper investigates the large-scale structure of the universe by analyzing superclusters from the REFLEX X-ray cluster survey and compares them with cosmological simulations, revealing unique properties and potential for future studies.

Contribution

It introduces a method to define superclusters considering their evolution, and demonstrates their distinct luminosity and mass functions compared to field clusters.

Findings

Superclusters have top-heavy X-ray luminosity and halo mass functions.

Superclusters differ from field clusters in their properties.

Potential for using superclusters to study cluster bias and mass scaling.

Abstract

We study the large-scale structure with superclusters from the REFLEX X-ray cluster survey together with cosmological N-body simulations. It is important to construct superclusters with criteria such that they are homogeneous in their properties. We lay out our theoretical concept considering future evolution of superclusters in their definition, and show that the X-ray luminosity and halo mass functions of clusters in superclusters are found to be top-heavy, different from those of clusters in the field. We also show a promising aspect of using superclusters to study the local cluster bias and mass scaling relation with simulations.