Cross-correlation Weak Lensing of SDSS Galaxy Clusters. I. Measurements

Creators: Sheldon, Erin S.; Johnston, David E.; Scranton, Ryan; Koester, Benjamin P.; McKay, Timothy A.; Oyaizu, Hiroaki; Cunha, Carlos; Lima, Marcos; Lin, Huan; Frieman, Joshua A.; Wechsler, Risa H.; Annis, James; Mandelbaum, Rachel; Bahcall, Neta A.; Fukugita, Masataka

Abstract

This is the first in a series of papers on the weak lensing effect caused by clusters of galaxies in Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The photometrically selected cluster sample, known as MaxBCG, includes ~130,000 objects between redshift 0.1 and 0.3, ranging in size from small groups to massive clusters. We split the clusters into bins of richness and luminosity and stack the surface density contrast to produce mean radial profiles. The mean profiles are detected over a range of scales, from the inner halo (25 kpc h^(–1)) well into the surrounding large-scale structure (30 Mpc h^(–1)), with a significance of 15 to 20 in each bin. The signal over this large range of scales is best interpreted in terms of the cluster-mass cross-correlation function. We pay careful attention to sources of systematic error, correcting for them where possible. The resulting signals are calibrated to the ~10% level, with the dominant remaining uncertainty being the redshift distribution of the background sources. We find that the profiles scale strongly with richness and luminosity. We find that the signal within a given richness bin depends upon luminosity, suggesting that luminosity is more closely correlated with mass than galaxy counts. We split the samples by redshift but detect no significant evolution. The profiles are not well described by power laws. In a subsequent series of papers, we invert the profiles to three-dimensional mass profiles, show that they are well fit by a halo model description, measure mass-to-light ratios, and provide a cosmological interpretation.

Additional Information

© 2009 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2006 August 25; accepted 2009 August 13; published 2009 September 17. Thanks to David Hogg and Michael Blanton for so many useful discussions, and to Roman Scoccimarro and Mulin Ding for use of the "Mafalda" computing cluster. Many thanks to the anonymous referee for excellent comments and constructive criticism. E.S.S. was supported in part by NSF grant AST-0428465 and the U.S. Department of Energy under contract No. DEAC02- 98CH10886. B.P.K. and T.A.M. gratefully acknowledge support from NSF grant AST 044327 and the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics. D.E.J. received partial support from the U.S. Department of Energy under contract number DE-FG02- 08ER41567. The research described in this paper was performed in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/. The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, University of Basel, Cambridge University, Case Western Reserve University, University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck- Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.

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