Optical galaxy cluster mock catalogs with realistic projection effects: Validations with the SDSS clusters
Andy Lee, Hao-Yi Wu, Andr\'es N. Salcedo, Tomomi Sunayama, Matteo, Costanzi, Justin Myles, Shulei Cao, Eduardo Rozo, Chun-Hao To, David H., Weinberg, Lei Yang, Conghao Zhou

TL;DR
This paper develops and validates realistic mock catalogs of optical galaxy clusters accounting for projection effects, using simulations and SDSS data, to improve cluster cosmology analyses.
Contribution
It introduces a flexible framework for modeling projection effects in optical cluster catalogs and validates it against SDSS data vectors.
Findings
Quadratic projection model best fits SDSS data
Projection effects minimally impact counts vs. richness and lensing signals
Validated mock catalogs enable improved cluster cosmology modeling
Abstract
Galaxy clusters identified in optical imaging surveys suffer from projection effects: Physically unassociated galaxies along a cluster's line of sight can be counted as its members and boost the observed richness (the number of cluster members). To model the impact of projection on cluster cosmology analyses, we apply a halo occupation distribution model to N-body simulations to simulate the red galaxies contributing to cluster members, and we use the number of galaxies in a cylinder along the line of sight (counts in cylinders) to model the impact of projection on cluster richness. We compare three projection models: uniform, quadratic, and Gaussian, and we convert between them by matching their effective cylinder volumes. We validate our mock catalogs using SDSS redMaPPer clusters' data vectors, including counts vs. richness, stacked lensing signal, spectroscopic redshift distribution…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstronomy and Astrophysical Research · Astronomical Observations and Instrumentation · Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena
