A. Vikhlinin

Erratum: "Chandra Sample of Nearby Relaxed Galaxy Clusters: Mass, Gas Fraction, and Mass-Temperature Relation"

We present gas and total mass profiles for 13 low-redshift, relaxed clusters spanning a temperature range 0.7-9 keV, derived from all available Chandra data of sufficient quality. In all clusters, gas-temperature profiles are measured to large radii (Vikhlinin et al.) so that direct hydrostatic mass estimates are possible to nearly r500 or beyond. The gas density was accurately traced to larger radii; its profile is not described well by a beta model, showing continuous steepening with radius. The derived ρtot profiles and their scaling with mass generally follow the Navarro-Frenk-White model with concentration expected for dark matter halos in ΛCDM cosmology. However, in three cool clusters, we detect a central mass component in excess of the Navarro-Frenk-White profile, apparently associated with their cD galaxies. In the inner region (r < 0.1r500), the gas density and temperature profiles exhibit significant scatter and trends with mass, but they become nearly self-similar at larger radii. Correspondingly, we find that the slope of the mass-temperature relation for these relaxed clusters is in good agreement with the simple self-similar behavior, M500 Tα, where α = (1.5-1.6) ± 0.1, if the gas temperatures are measured excluding the central cool cores. The normalization of this M-T relation is significantly, by ≈30%, higher than most previous X-ray determinations. We derive accurate gas mass fraction profiles, which show an increase with both radius and cluster mass. The enclosed fgas profiles within r2500 0.4r500 have not yet reached any asymptotic value and are still far (by a factor of 1.5-2) from the universal baryon fraction according to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations. The fgas trends become weaker and its values closer to universal at larger radii, in particular, in spherical shells r2500 < r < r500.

CHANDRA CLUSTER COSMOLOGY PROJECT III: COSMOLOGICAL PARAMETER CONSTRAINTS

Chandra observations of large samples of galaxy clusters detected in X-rays by ROSAT provide a new, robust determination of the cluster mass functions at low and high redshifts. Statistical and systematic errors are now sufficiently small, and the redshift leverage sufficiently large for the mass function evolution to be used as a useful growth of a structure-based dark energy probe. In this paper, we present cosmological parameter constraints obtained from Chandra observations of 37 clusters withz �= 0.55 derived from 400 deg 2 ROSAT serendipitous survey and 49 brightest z ≈ 0.05 clusters detected in the All-Sky Survey. Evolution of the mass function between these redshifts requires ΩΛ > 0 with a ∼ 5σ significance, and constrains the dark energy equation- of-state parameter to w0 =− 1.14 ± 0.21, assuming a constant w and a flat universe. Cluster information also significantly improves constraints when combined with other methods. Fitting our cluster data jointly with the latest supernovae, Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, and baryonic acoustic oscillation measurements, we obtain w0 =− 0.991 ± 0.045 (stat) ±0.039 (sys), a factor of 1.5 reduction in statistical uncertainties, and nearly a factor of 2 improvement in systematics compared with constraints that can be obtained without clusters. The joint analysis of these four data sets puts a conservative upper limit on the masses of light neutrinos mν < 0.33 eV at 95% CL. We also present updated measurements of ΩMh and σ8 from the low-redshift cluster mass function.

Chandra Cluster Cosmology Project. II. Samples and X-Ray Data Reduction

We discuss the measurements of the galaxy cluster mass functions at z 0.05 and z 0.5 using high-quality Chandra observations of samples derived from the ROSAT PSPC All-Sky and 400 deg2 surveys. We provide a full reference for the data analysis procedures, present updated calibration of relations between the total cluster mass and its X-ray indicators (TX , M gas, and YX ) based on a subsample of low-z relaxed clusters, and present a first measurement of the evolving LX -M tot relation (with M tot estimated from YX ) obtained from a well defined statistically complete cluster sample and with appropriate corrections for the Malmquist bias applied. Finally, we present the derived cluster mass functions, estimate the systematic uncertainties in this measurement, and discuss the calculation of the likelihood function. We confidently measure the evolution in the cluster comoving number density at a fixed mass threshold, e.g., by a factor of 5.0 ? 1.2 at M 500 = 2.5 ? 1014 h ?1 M ? between z = 0 and 0.5. This evolution reflects the growth of density perturbations, and can be used for the cosmological constraints complementing those from the distance-redshift relation.

Chandra X-Ray Observations of the Hydra A Cluster: An Interaction between the Radio Source and the X-Ray-emitting Gas

We present Chandra X-ray observations of the Hydra A cluster of galaxies, and we report the discovery of structure in the central 80 kpc of the clusters X-ray-emitting gas. The most remarkable structures are depressions in the X-ray surface brightness, approximately 25-35 kpc in diameter, that are coincident with Hydra As radio lobes. The depressions are nearly devoid of X-ray-emitting gas, and there is no evidence for shock-heated gas surrounding the radio lobes. We suggest that the gas within the surface brightness depressions was displaced as the radio lobes expanded subsonically, leaving cavities in the hot atmosphere. The gas temperature declines from 4 keV at 70 kpc to 3 keV in the inner 20 kpc of the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG), and the cooling time of the gas is approximately 600 Myr in the inner 10 kpc. These properties are consistent with the presence of an approximately 34 M middle dot in circle yr-1 cooling flow within a 70 kpc radius. Bright X-ray emission is present in the BCG surrounding a recently accreted disk of nebular emission and young stars. The star formation rate is commensurate with the cooling rate of the hot gas within the volume of the disk, although the sink for the material that may be cooling at larger radii remains elusive. A bright, unresolved X-ray source is present in the BCGs nucleus, coincident with the radio core. Its X-ray spectrum is consistent with a power law absorbed by a foreground NH approximately 4x1022 cm-2 column of hydrogen. This column is roughly consistent with the hydrogen column seen in absorption toward the less, similar24 pc diameter VLBA radio source. Apart from the point source, no evidence for excess X-ray absorption above the Galactic column is found.

The Temperature structure of 30 nearby clusters observed with ASCA. Similarity of temperature profiles

We present an analysis of ASCAspatially resolved spectroscopic data for a nearly complete sample of bright clusters with redshifts between 0.04 and 0.09. Together with several clusters from our previously published ASCA observations, this sample consists of 26 objects with Te ∼> 4 keV for which we obtained projected temperature profiles and, when possible, crude two-dimensional temperature maps. The clusters are A85, A119, A399, A401, A478, A754, A780, A1650, A1651, A1795, A2029, A2065, A2142, A2256, A2319, A2597, A3112, A3266, A3376, A3395, A3558, A3571, A3667, A4059, Cygnus A, and Triangulum Australis. All clusters, with the possible exception of a few with insufficiently accurate data, are found to be nonisothermal with spatial temperature variations by a factor of 1.3–2. ASCAtemperature maps for many clusters reveal merger shocks. The most notable of these are A754, A2065, A3558, A3667, and Cygnus A; merging can also be inferred with lower confidence from the A85 and A119 temperature maps and from the A3395 and Triangulum Australis entropy maps. Including several mergers obvious from the images but for which our temperature maps are insufficiently accurate, about half of the sample shows signs of merging. Nearly all clusters show a significant radial temperature decline at large radii. For a typical 7 keV cluster, the observed temperature decline between 1 and 6 X-ray core radii (0.15 and 0.9h−1 Mpc) can be approximately quantified by a polytropic index of 1.2–1.3. Assuming such a polytropic temperature profile and hydrostatic equilibrium, the gravitating mass within 1 and within 6 core radii is approximately 1.35 and 0.7 times the isothermal β-model estimates, respectively. Most interestingly, we find that all temperature profiles (excluding those for the most asymmetric clusters) appear remarkably similar when the temperature is plotted against radius in units of the estimated virial radius. We compare the composite temperature profile to a host of published hydrodynamic simulations. The observed profiles appear steeper than predictions of most Lagrangian simulations (Evrard, Metzler, & Navarro 1996; Eke, Navarro, & Frenk 1997). The predictions for Ω = 1 cosmological models are most discrepant, while models with low Ω are closer to our data. We note, however, that at least one Ω = 1 Lagrangian simulation (Katz & White 1993) and the recent high-resolution Eulerian simulation (Bryan & Norman 1997) produced clusters with temperature profiles similar to or steeper than those observed. Our results thus provide a constraint for testing numerical simulations and discriminating among models of cluster formation. Subject headings: Cosmology — galaxies: clusters: individual — intergalactic medium — X-rays: galaxies

Effects of Galaxy Formation on Thermodynamics of the Intracluster Medium

We present detailed comparisons of the intracluster medium (ICM) in cosmological Eulerian cluster simulations with deep Chandra observations of nearby relaxed clusters. To assess the impact of galaxy formation, we compare two sets of simulations, one performed in the nonradiative regime and another with radiative cooling and several physical processes critical to various aspects of galaxy formation: star formation, metal enrichment, and stellar feedback. We show that the observed ICM properties outside cluster cores are well reproduced in the simulations that include cooling and star formation, while the nonradiative simulations predict an overall shape of the ICM profiles inconsistent with observations. In particular, we find that the ICM entropy in our runs with cooling is enhanced to the observed levels at radii as large as half of the virial radius. We also find that outside cluster cores entropy scaling with the mean ICM temperature in both simulations and Chandra observations is consistent with being self-similar within current error bars. We find that the pressure profiles of simulated clusters are also close to self-similar and exhibit little cluster-to-cluster scatter. We provide analytic fitting formulae for the pressure profiles of the simulated and observed clusters. The X-ray observable mass relations for our simulated sample agree with the Chandra measurements to ≈10%-20% in normalization. We show that this systematic difference could be caused by the subsonic gas motions, unaccounted for in X-ray hydrostatic mass estimates. The much improved agreement of simulations and observations in the ICM profiles and scaling relations is encouraging, and the existence of tight relations of X-ray observables, such as YX, and total cluster mass and the simple redshift evolution of these relations hold promise for the use of clusters as cosmological probes. However, the disagreement between the predicted and observed fractions of cluster baryons in stars remains a major puzzle.

Chandra temperature profiles for a sample of nearby relaxed galaxy clusters

We present Chandra gas temperature profiles at large radii for a sample of 13 nearby, relaxed galaxy clusters and groups, which includes A133, A262, A383, A478, A907, A1413, A1795, A1991, A2029, A2390, MKW 4, RX J1159+5531, and USGC S152. The sample covers a range of average temperatures from 1 to 10 keV. The clusters are selected from the archive or observed by us to have sufficient exposures and off-center area coverage to enable accurate background subtraction and reach the temperature accuracy of better than 20%-30% at least to r = (0.4-0.5)r180 and for the three best clusters to (0.6-0.7)r180. For all clusters, we find cool gas in the cores, outside of which the temperature reaches a peak at r ~ 0.15r180 and then declines to ~0.5 of its peak value at r 0.5r180. When the profiles are scaled by the cluster average temperature (excluding cool cores) and the estimated virial radius, they show large scatter at small radii but remarkable similarity at r > (0.1-0.2)r180 for all but one cluster (A2390). Our results are in good agreement with previous measurements from ASCA by Markevitch et al. and from BeppoSAX by De Grandi & Molendi. Four clusters have recent XMM-Newton temperature profiles, two of which agree with our results, and we discuss reasons for disagreement for the other two. The overall shape of the temperature profiles at large radii is reproduced in recent cosmological simulations.

Chandra Observation of Abell 2142: Survival of Dense Subcluster Cores in a Merger

We use Chandra data to map the gas temperature in the central region of the merging cluster A2142. The cluster is markedly nonisothermal; it appears that the central cooling flow has been disturbed but not destroyed by a merger. The X-ray image exhibits two sharp, bow-shaped, shocklike surface brightness edges or gas density discontinuities. However, temperature and pressure profiles across these edges indicate that these are not shock fronts. The pressure is reasonably continuous across these edges, while the entropy jumps in the opposite sense to that in a shock (i.e., the denser side of the edge has lower temperature, and hence lower entropy). Most plausibly, these edges delineate the dense subcluster cores that have survived a merger and ram pressure stripping by the surrounding shock-heated gas.

Direct Constraints on the Dark Matter Self-Interaction Cross Section from the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657–56

We compare new maps of the hot gas, dark matter, and galaxies for 1E 0657-56, a cluster with a rare, high-velocity merger occurring nearly in the plane of the sky. The X-ray observations reveal a prominent bow shock and a bullet-like gas subcluster just exiting the collision site. The optical image shows that the gas bullet lags behind the subcluster galaxies; the weak-lensing mass map reveals a dark matter clump lying ahead of the collisional gas bullet, but coincident with the effectively collisionless galaxies. From these observations, one can directly constrain the cross-section of the dark matter self-interaction. That the dark matter is not fluid-like can be seen directly from the maps; more quantitative limits can be derived from four simple independent arguments. Our most sensitive constraint, σ/m<1 cm2 g−1, comes from the consistency of the subcluster mass-to-light ratio with the main cluster (and universal) value, which rules out a large mass loss due to dark matter particle collisions.

A Textbook Example of a Bow Shock in the Merging Galaxy Cluster 1E 0657–56

In the representative embodiments of the new and improved methods and apparatus disclosed herein for controlling multicharge perforating guns or core-sampling guns, the gun-control system of the present invention includes a selectively-operable multi-contact switch assembly operative from the surface to sequentially connect a group of electrically-detonatable charges into a firing circuit for consecutively firing the charges on the gun. An array of serially-connected Zener diodes cooperatively associated with the switch assembly provides indications at the surface showing which of the several charges is then connected into the gun-firing circuit. The new and improved gun-control system also includes a shot-monitoring system which provides additional surface indications from which it can be determined whether the charges on the gun are being successfully fired and, at least approximately, that they are being consecutively fired.