SPT-GMOS: A Gemini/GMOS-South Spectroscopic Survey of Galaxy Clusters in the SPT-SZ Survey

TL;DR

The SPT-GMOS survey provides extensive spectroscopic data for galaxy clusters from the SPT-SZ survey, enabling detailed analysis of cluster properties, galaxy types, and background lensed galaxies, thus advancing understanding of galaxy cluster dynamics and composition.

Contribution

This work presents the first large-scale spectroscopic dataset for SPT-selected galaxy clusters, including galaxy redshifts, spectral indices, and measurements of background lensed galaxies, enhancing cluster characterization.

Findings

Spectroscopic redshifts for 1579 cluster galaxies.

Identification of 10 new strongly-lensed background galaxies.

Measurement of cluster velocity dispersions and spectral classifications.

Abstract

We present the results of SPT-GMOS, a spectroscopic survey with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Gemini South. The targets of SPT-GMOS are galaxy clusters identified in the SPT-SZ survey, a millimeter-wave survey of 2500 squ. deg. of the southern sky using the South Pole Telescope (SPT). Multi-object spectroscopic observations of 62 SPT-selected galaxy clusters were performed between January 2011 and December 2015, yielding spectra with radial velocity measurements for 2595 sources. We identify 2243 of these sources as galaxies, and 352 as stars. Of the galaxies, we identify 1579 as members of SPT-SZ galaxy clusters. The primary goal of these observations was to obtain spectra of cluster member galaxies to estimate cluster redshifts and velocity dispersions. We describe the full spectroscopic dataset and resulting data products, including galaxy redshifts, cluster redshifts and velocity dispersions, and measurements of several well-known spectral indices for each galaxy: the equivalent width, W, of [O II] 3727,3729 and H-delta, and the 4000A break strength, D4000. We use the spectral indices to classify galaxies by spectral type (i.e., passive, post-starburst, star-forming), and we match the spectra against photometric catalogs to characterize spectroscopically-observed cluster members as a function of brightness (relative to m*). Finally, we report several new measurements of redshifts for ten bright, strongly-lensed background galaxies in the cores of eight galaxy clusters. Combining the SPT-GMOS dataset with previous spectroscopic follow-up of SPT-SZ galaxy clusters results in spectroscopic measurements for >100 clusters, or ~20% of the full SPT-SZ sample.