Calibration of the optical mass proxy for clusters of galaxies and an update of the WHL12 cluster catalog

TL;DR

This paper calibrates an optical mass proxy for galaxy clusters using multi-wavelength data, accounts for redshift evolution, and updates the cluster catalog with new high-redshift clusters, achieving a scatter of 0.17 dex in mass estimates.

Contribution

It introduces a redshift-evolved optical richness measure and updates the cluster catalog with over 25,000 new clusters, improving mass estimation accuracy.

Findings

The correlation between mass and optical luminosity evolves with redshift.

The new richness measure reduces scatter in mass estimates to 0.17 dex.

The updated catalog includes 25,419 new high-redshift clusters.

Abstract

Accurately determining the mass of galaxy clusters is fundamental for many studies on cosmology and galaxy evolution. We collect and rescale the cluster masses of 1191 clusters of 0.05<z<0.75 estimated by X-ray or Sunyaev-Zeldovich measurements and use them to calibrate the optical mass proxy. The total r-band luminosity (in units of L^{\ast}) of these clusters are obtained by using spectroscopic and photometric data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find that the correlation between the cluster mass M_{500} and total r-band luminosity L_{500} significantly evolves with redshift. After correcting for the evolution, we define a new cluster richness R_{L\ast,500}=L_{500}*E(z)^{1.40} as the optical mass proxy. By using this newly defined richness and the recently released SDSS DR12 spectroscopic data, we update the WHL12 cluster catalog and identify 25,419 new rich clusters at high redshift. In the SDSS spectroscopic survey region, about 89% of galaxy clusters have spectroscopic redshifts. The mass can be estimated with a scatter of 0.17 dex for the clusters in the updated catalog.