The ACT-DR5 MCMF Galaxy Cluster Catalog

TL;DR

This paper presents a new, larger galaxy cluster catalog based on ACT-DR5 data, with improved purity and completeness, enabling better cosmological and astrophysical studies through multi-wavelength validation and CMB lensing detection.

Contribution

The creation of the largest tSZE-selected galaxy cluster catalog to date with enhanced control over sample purity and completeness, including a significant increase in high-redshift clusters.

Findings

Catalog contains 6,237 clusters with 10.7% contamination.

Confirmed the catalog's completeness and purity through cross-matching.

Detected the strongest CMB lensing signal around clusters to date.

Abstract

Galaxy clusters are useful cosmological probes and interesting astrophysical laboratories. With growing cluster samples, a deeper understanding of the sample characteristics and improved control of systematics becomes more crucial. In this analysis we create a new and larger ACT-DR5-based thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect (tSZE) selected galaxy cluster catalog with improved control over sample purity and completeness. We employ the red sequence based cluster redshift and confirmation tool MCMF together with optical imaging data from the Legacy Survey DR-10 and infrared data from the WISE satellite to systematicallyidentify true clusters from a new cluster candidate detection run on the ACT-DR5 dataset. The resulting ACT-DR5 MCMF sample contains 6,237 clusters with a residual contamination of 10.7%. This is an increase of 51% compared to the previous ACT-DR5 cluster catalog, making this catalog the largest tSZE-selected cluster catalog to date. The z>1 subsample contains 703 clusters, three times more than in the previous ACT-DR5 catalog. Matching the ACT-DR5 MCMF cluster catalog with a deeper tSZE sample from SPTpol 500d allows us to confirm the completeness and purity of the new ACT-DR5 MCMF sample. Cross-matching to the two largest X-ray selected cluster samples, the all-sky RASS MCMF and the half-sky eRASS1, confirms the sample purity of the RASS MCMF sample and in the case of eRASS1 reveals that 43% of the matched clusters are designated in eRASS1 as X-ray point sources rather than clusters. Cross-correlating the ACT-DR5 MCMF cluster catalog with ACT-DR6 lensing maps results in a 16.4\sigma detection of CMB lensing around the clusters, corresponding to the strongest signal found so far for a galaxy cluster sample. Repeating the measurement for the z>1 cluster subsample yields a significance of 4.3\sigma, which is the strongest CMB lensing detection in a z>1 cluster sample to date.