The discovery of two giant arcs in the rich cluster A2219 with the Keck telescope

Abstract

We report the discovery with the Keck telescope of two new multiply imaged arcs in the luminous X-ray cluster A2219 (z = 0.225). The brighter arc in the field is red and we use spectroscopic and photometric information to identify it as a z ~ 1 moderately star-forming system. The brightness of this arc suggests that it is formed from two merging images of the background source, and we identify possible candidates for the third image of this source. The second giant arc in this cluster is blue and, while fainter than the red arc, it has a similarly large angular extent (32 arcsec). This arc comprises three images of a single nucleated source - the relative parities of the three images are discernible in our best-resolution images. The presence of several bright multiply imaged arcs in a single cluster allows detailed modelling of the cluster mass distribution, especially when redshift information is available. We present a lensing model of the cluster, which explains the properties of the various arcs, and we contrast this model with the optical and X-ray information available on the cluster. We uncover significant differences between the distributions of mass and X-ray gas in the cluster. We suggest that such discrepancies may indicate an on-going merger event in the cluster core, possibly associated with a group around the second brightest cluster member. The preponderance of similar merger signatures in a large fraction of the moderate-redshift clusters would indicate their dynamical immaturity.

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