Optical Confirmation of X-ray selected Galaxy clusters from the Swift AGN and Cluster survey with MDM and Pan-STARRS Data (Paper III)

TL;DR

This study confirms optical counterparts of X-ray selected galaxy clusters from the Swift survey using MDM and Pan-STARRS data, providing insights into cluster properties and aiding cosmological research.

Contribution

It presents the optical confirmation of 55 galaxy clusters from the Swift survey, expanding the catalog and analyzing their properties with multi-band imaging.

Findings

Confirmed 55 clusters with significant galaxy overdensities

Most clusters are at redshifts below 0.6

Provided X-ray luminosity and optical richness measurements

Abstract

To understand structure formation in the universe and impose stronger constraints on the cluster mass function and cosmological models, it is important to have large galaxy cluster catalogs. The Swift AGN and Cluster Survey is a serendipitous X-ray survey aimed at building a large statistically selected X-ray cluster catalog with 442 cluster candidates in its first release. Our initial SDSS follow-up study confirmed $50\%$ of clusters in the SDSS footprint as z $<$ 0.5 clusters. Here, we present further optical follow-up analysis of 248 (out of 442) cluster candidates from the Swift cluster catalog using multi-band imaging from the MDM $2.4m$ telescope and the Pan-STARRS survey. We report the optical confirmation of 55 clusters with $> 3\sigma$ galaxy overdensities and detectable red sequences in the color-magnitude space. The majority of these confirmed clusters have redshifts z $<$ 0.6. The remaining candidates are potentially higher redshift clusters that are excellent targets for infrared observations. We report the X-ray luminosity and the optical richness for these confirmed clusters. We also discuss the distinction between X-ray and optical observables for the detected and non-detected cluster candidates.