Confirmation of NIKA2 investigation of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect by using synthetic clusters of galaxies

TL;DR

This study validates NIKA2's capability to map the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in galaxy clusters by using synthetic clusters from simulations, comparing with real observations to assess ICM pressure profiles and dynamical states.

Contribution

It introduces a combined simulation and observational approach to validate NIKA2's measurements and analyze the impact of cluster dynamical states on pressure profile recovery.

Findings

NIKA2 pipeline validation through joint analysis with Planck data.

Synthetic clusters help assess ICM disturbance effects.

Morphological analysis can distinguish relaxed and disturbed clusters.

Abstract

The NIKA2 Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Large Program (SZLP) is focused on mapping the thermal SZ signal of a representative sample of selected Planck and ACT clusters spanning the redshift range 0.5<$z$<0.9. Hydrodynamical N-body simulations prove to be a powerful tool to endorse NIKA2 capabilities for estimating the impact of IntraCluster Medium (ICM) disturbances when recovering the pressure radial profiles. For this goal we employ a subsample of objects, carefully extracted from the catalog "Marenostrum MUltidark SImulations of galaxy Clusters" (MUSIC), spanning equivalent redshift and mass ranges as the LPSZ. The joint analysis of real observations of the tSZ with NIKA2 and Planck enables to validate the NIKA2 pipeline and to estimate the ICM pressure profiles. Moreover, the possibility to identify "a priori" the dynamical state of the selected synthetic clusters allows us to verify the impact on the recovered ICM profile shapes and their scatters. Morphological analysis of maps of the Compton parameter seems to be a way to observationally segregate the sample based on the dynamical state in relaxed and disturbed synthetic clusters.