2011/12/20 by Massimiliano Bonamente, Nicole Hasler, Esra Bülbül +28 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #CMB cold spot #Cluster (spacecraft) #Cosmic microwave background #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy cluster #Intracluster medium #Optics #Physics #Planck #ROSAT #Sunyaev–Zel'dovich effect #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/14/2/025010
Accepted for New Journal of Physics, Focus Issue on Galaxy Clusters
arxiv created 2011/12/20 · openalex publication_date 2012/02/29 · arxiv updated 2015/06/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We present the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ) effect observations of a sample of 25 massive relaxed galaxy clusters observed with the Sunyaev–Zel'dovich array (SZA), an eight-element interferometer that is part of the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA). We performed an analysis of new SZA data and archival Chandra observations of this sample to investigate the integrated pressure—a proxy for cluster mass—determined from x-ray and SZ observations, two independent probes of the intra-cluster medium (ICM). This analysis makes use of a model for the ICM introduced by Bulbul (2010 Astrophys. J. 720 1038) which can be applied simultaneously to the SZ and x-ray data. With this model, we estimated the pressure profile for each cluster using a joint analysis of the SZ and x-ray data, and using the SZ data alone. We found that the integrated pressures measured from the x-ray and SZ data are consistent. This conclusion is in agreement with recent results obtained using WMAP and Planck data, confirming that SZ and x-ray observations of massive clusters detect the same amount of thermal pressure from the ICM. To test for possible biases introduced by our choice of model, we also fitted the SZ data using the universal pressure profile proposed by Arnaud (2010 Astron. Astrophys. 517 A92) and found consistency between the two models out to r 500 in the pressure profiles and integrated pressures.