Characterizing Galaxy Clusters with Gravitational Potential

We propose a simple estimator for the gravitational potential of cluster-size halos using the temperature and density profiles of the intracluster gas based on the assumptions of hydrostatic equilibrium and spherical symmetry. Using high resolution cosmological simulations of galaxy clusters, we show that the scaling relation between this estimator and the gravitational potential has a small intrinsic scatter of ~8%-15%, and it is insensitive to baryon physics outside the cluster core. The slope and the normalization of the scaling relation vary weakly with redshift, and they are relatively independent of the choice of radial range used and the dynamical states of the clusters. The results presented here provide a possible way for using the cluster potential function as an alternative to the cluster mass function in constraining cosmology using galaxy clusters.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, 4 tables. Matching the version accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Analytical model for non-thermal pressure in galaxy clusters - III. Removing the hydrostatic mass bias

Non-thermal pressure in galaxy clusters leads to underestimation of the mass of galaxy clusters based on hydrostatic equilibrium with thermal gas pressure. This occurs even for dynamically relaxed clusters that are used for calibrating the mass-observable scaling relations. We show that the analytical model for non-thermal pressure developed in Shi & Komatsu 2014 can correct for this so-called 'hydrostatic mass bias', if most of the non-thermal pressure comes from bulk and turbulent motions of gas in the intracluster medium. Our correction works for the sample average irrespective of the mass estimation method, or the dynamical state of the clusters. This makes it possible to correct for the bias in the hydrostatic mass estimates from X-ray surface brightness and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich observations that will be available for clusters in a wide range of redshifts and dynamical states.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, published in MNRA

Correlations between Triaxial Shapes and Formation History of Dark Matter Haloes

The shape of dark matter haloes plays a critical role in constraining cosmology with upcoming large-scale structure surveys. In this paper, we study the correlations between the triaxial shapes and formation histories in dark matter haloes in the MultiDark Planck 2 N-body cosmological simulation. We find that halo ellipticity is strongly correlated with halo properties that serve as proxies of halo formation history, such as halo concentration and the peak-centroid offset. In particular, the correlation between halo ellipticity and halo concentration is nearly independent of the halo density peak height. We present a simple model for the correlation between halo ellipticity and concentration using conditional abundance matching, and provide fitting formulae for the multi-dimensional distributions of triaxial halo shape as a function of halo peak height. We apply our halo shape model to gauge the effects of halo ellipticity and orientation bias on the excess surface mass density profiles in cluster-size halos. Our model should be useful for exploring the impact of triaxial halo shape on cosmological constraints in upcoming weak lensing surveys of galaxy clusters.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRA