Oral Presentation

Galaxy Cluster Mass Calibration for Cosmology: SZE, X-ray, and Lensing

Author(s): Nicole Czakon (ASIAA) Keiichi Umetsu (ASIAA)

Presenter: Nicole Czakon (ASIAA)

Estimating the mass function with galaxy clusters provides a unique cosmological measurement that can be constrained over a large range of redshifts using several different, statistically independent, observational techniques. One of these techniques is to observe galaxy clusters in the millimeter regime by means of the inverse Compton scattering of the CMB off of the free electrons in the intracluster plasma, i.e., the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE). Due to the differential nature of the measurement with respect to the CMB, SZE surface brightness does not dim with redshift and it therefore can be used to constrain the galaxy cluster mass function out to redshifts beyond z=1. We have recently completed a study constraining the SZE scaling relations with respect galaxy cluster mass and we find that our measured scaling relations do not follow the self-similar scaling as predicted and reported by other similar studies. For these results to hold, we must have a high confidence in the mass estimates with which we estimate these scaling relations. I will review the status of SZE observations in general and the progress that has been made using a large diversity of probes to calibrate galaxy cluster masses.