Towards the first mean pressure profile estimate with the NIKA2 Sunyaev-Zeldovich Large Program

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method to estimate the average pressure profile of galaxy clusters using high-resolution SZ observations from the NIKA2 camera, aiding cosmological studies.

Contribution

It presents a pipeline for deriving mean pressure profiles from cluster maps, including uncertainty propagation and validation on realistic simulations.

Findings

Validated method on realistic simulations.

Enables calibration of SZ scaling relations.

Supports cosmological analysis of galaxy clusters.

Abstract

High-resolution mapping of the hot gas in galaxy clusters is a key tool for cluster-based cosmological analyses. Taking advantage of the NIKA2 millimeter camera operated at the IRAM 30-m telescope, the NIKA2 SZ Large Program seeks to get a high-resolution follow-up of 38 galaxy clusters covering a wide mass range at intermediate to high redshift. The measured SZ fluxes will be essential to calibrate the SZ scaling relation and the galaxy clusters mean pressure profile, needed for the cosmological exploitation of SZ surveys. We present in this study a method to infer a mean pressure profile from cluster observations. We have designed a pipeline encompassing the map-making and the thermodynamical properties estimates from maps. We then combine all the individual fits, propagating the uncertainties on integrated quantities, such as $R_{500}$ or $P_{500}$, and the intrinsic scatter coming from the deviation to the standard self-similar model. We validate the proposed method on realistic LPSZ-like cluster simulations.