Exploring the contamination of the DES-Y1 Cluster Sample with SPT-SZ selected clusters

TL;DR

This study cross-validates the DES-Y1 redMaPPer galaxy cluster catalog with SPT-SZ SZE data, revealing contamination at low richness levels that affects mass calibration and cluster abundance predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian model to calibrate the richness--mass relation and quantifies contamination effects in optical cluster catalogs.

Findings

Mass trend $ ightarrow$ linear relation ($B extasciitilde1$)

No significant redshift evolution detected

Contaminants at low richness constitute over 12% of the population

Abstract

We perform a cross validation of the cluster catalog selected by the red-sequence Matched-filter Probabilistic Percolation algorithm (redMaPPer) in Dark Energy Survey year 1 (DES-Y1) data by matching it with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) selected cluster catalog from the South Pole Telescope SPT-SZ survey. Of the 1005 redMaPPer selected clusters with measured richness $\hat\lambda>40$ in the joint footprint, 207 are confirmed by SPT-SZ. Using the mass information from the SZE signal, we calibrate the richness--mass relation using a Bayesian cluster population model. We find a mass trend $\lambda\propto M^{B}$ consistent with a linear relation ($B\sim1$), no significant redshift evolution and an intrinsic scatter in richness of $\sigma_{\lambda} = 0.22\pm0.06$. At low richness SPT-SZ confirms fewer redMaPPer clusters than expected. We interpret this richness dependent deficit in confirmed systems as due to the increased presence at low richness of low mass objects not correctly accounted for by our richness-mass scatter model, which we call contaminants. At a richness $\hat \lambda=40$, this population makes up $>$12$\%$ (97.5 percentile) of the total population. Extrapolating this to a measured richness $\hat \lambda=20$ yields $>$22$\%$ (97.5 percentile). With these contamination fractions, the predicted redMaPPer number counts in different plausible cosmologies are compatible with the measured abundance. The presence of such a population is also a plausible explanation for the different mass trends ($B\sim0.75$) obtained from mass calibration using purely optically selected clusters. The mean mass from stacked weak lensing (WL) measurements suggests that these low mass contaminants are galaxy groups with masses $\sim3$-$5\times 10^{13} $ M$_\odot$ which are beyond the sensitivity of current SZE and X-ray surveys but a natural target for SPT-3G and eROSITA.