AMICO galaxy clusters in KiDS-1000: cosmological constraints and mass calibration from counts and weak lensing

TL;DR

This paper combines weak-lensing and count measurements of galaxy clusters from KiDS-1000 to improve cosmological constraints and calibrate cluster mass proxies, achieving significant reductions in uncertainties and confirming the effectiveness of richness as a mass indicator.

Contribution

It presents a joint modeling approach of weak-lensing and count data for about 8000 clusters, incorporating comprehensive systematic uncertainties, and provides refined cosmological parameters and mass calibration.

Findings

Reduced uncertainties on Ω_m and σ_8 by half.

Measured S_8 in agreement with recent cluster and shear analyses.

Confirmed λ* as an accurate mass proxy with 8% precision.

Abstract

We present the joint modelling of weak-lensing and count measurements of the galaxy clusters detected with the AMICO code, in the fourth data release of the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS-1000). The analysed sample comprises about 8000 clusters, covering an effective area of 839 deg$^{2}$ and extending up to a redshift of $z = 0.8$. Stacked cluster weak-lensing and count measurements have been derived in bins of redshift and intrinsic richness, $\lambda^*$. Based on self-organising maps, we reconstructed the true redshift distributions of the background galaxy samples. We accounted for the systematic uncertainties arising from impurities in the background and cluster samples, biases in the cluster $z$ and $\lambda^*$, projection effects, halo orientation and miscentring, truncation of cluster halo mass distributions, matter correlated with cluster haloes, multiplicative shear bias, baryonic matter, geometric distortions in the lensing profiles, uncertainties in the theoretical halo mass function, and super-sample covariance. We also employed a blinding strategy based on perturbing the cluster sample completeness. The improved statistics and photometry compared to the previous KiDS data release, KiDS-DR3, have led to a halving of the uncertainties on $\Omega_{\rm m}$ and $\sigma_8$, as we obtained $\Omega_{\rm m}=0.22\pm0.02$ and $\sigma_8=0.86\pm0.03$. The constraint on $S_8 \equiv \sigma_8(\Omega_{\rm m}/0.3)^{0.5}$, $S_8=0.74\pm0.03$, is in excellent agreement with recent cluster count and KiDS-1000 cosmic shear analyses, while it shows a $2.8\sigma$ tension with Planck cosmic microwave background results. The constraints on the $\log\lambda^*-\log M_{200}$ relation imply a mass precision of 8%, on average. In addition, the result on the intrinsic scatter of the $\log\lambda^*-\log M_{200}$ relation, $\sigma_{\rm intr}=0.05\pm0.02$, confirms that $\lambda^*$ is an excellent mass proxy.