Search

We characterise the entropy profiles of 32 very high mass ($M_{500}>7.75\times10^{14}~M_{\odot}$) galaxy clusters (HIGHMz), selected from the CHEX-MATE sample, to study the intracluster medium (ICM) entropy distribution in a regime where non-gravitational effects are minimised. Using XMM-Newton measurements, we measure the entropy profiles up to ~$R_{500}$ for all objects. The scaled profiles exhibit large dispersion in the central regions, but converge rapidly to the expectation from pure gravitational collapse beyond the core. We quantify the correlation between the ICM morphological parameters and scaled entropy as a function of radius, showing that morphologically relaxed (disturbed) objects have low (high) central entropy. We compare our data to other observational samples, finding differences in normalisation which are linked to the average mass of the samples in question. We find that a weaker mass dependence than self-similar in the scaling (Am ~ -0.25) allows us to minimise the dispersion in the radial range [0.3-0.8]$R_{500}$ for clusters spanning over a decade in mass. The deviation from self-similarity is radially dependent and is more pronounced at small and intermediate radii than at $R_{500}$. We also investigate the distribution of central entropy $K_0$, finding no evidence for bimodality, and outer slopes $\alpha$, which peaks at ~1.1. Using weak lensing masses, we find indication for a small suppression of the scatter (~30%) beyond the core when using masses derived from Yx in the rescaling. Finally, we compare to recent cosmological numerical simulations from THE THREE HUNDRED and MACSIS, finding good agreement with our observational data. These results provide a robust observational benchmark in the gravity-dominated regime and will serve as a future reference for samples at lower mass, higher redshifts, and for ongoing work using cosmological numerical simulations., Comment: 26 pages, 18 figures, 6 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A

Having a detailed knowledge of the intracluster medium (ICM) to infer the exact cluster physics such as the cluster dynamical state is crucial for cluster-based cosmological studies. This knowledge limits the accuracy and precision of mass estimation, a key parameter for such studies. In this paper, we conduct an in-depth analysis of cluster ACT-CL J0240.0+0116 using a multi-wavelength approach, with a primary focus on high angular resolution Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) thermal component observations obtained under the NIKA2 Sunyaev-Zeldovich Large Programme (LPSZ). We create composite images using NIKA2, X-ray, and optical galaxy number density maps. The results reveal distinct signs of disturbance within the cluster with the distributions of gas and member galaxies that do not overlap. We also find suggestions of an inflow of matter onto the cluster from the southwestern direction. Ultimately, we classify the cluster as disturbed, using morphological indicators derived from its SZ, X-ray, and optical image. The cluster SZ signal is also contaminated by a strong central point source. We adopt different approaches to handling this contaminant and find the estimates of our pressure and hydrostatic mass profiles robust to the point source mitigation model. The cluster hydrostatic mass is estimated at $4.25^{+0.50}_{-0.45\, } \times 10^{14} \,\mathrm{M}_{\odot}$ for the case where the point source was masked. These values are consistent with the mass estimated using only X-ray data and with those from previous SZ studies of the Atacama cosmology telescope (ACT) survey, with improved precision on the mass estimate. Our findings strongly suggest that ACT-CL J0240.0+0116 is a disturbed cluster system, and the detailed observations and derived values serve as a compelling case study for the capabilities of the LPSZ in mapping the cluster ICM with high precision., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, submitted to A&A

The connection between the thermal and non-thermal properties in galaxy clusters hosting radio halos seems fairly well established. However, a comprehensive analysis of such a connection has been made only for integrated quantities (e.g. $L_X - P_{radio}$ relation). In recent years new-generation radio telescopes have enabled the unprecedented possibility to study the non-thermal properties of galaxy clusters on a spatially resolved basis. Here, we perform a pilot study to investigate the mentioned properties on five targets, by combining X-ray data from the CHEX-MATE project with the second data release from the LOFAR Two meter Sky survey. We find a strong correlation ($r_s \sim 0.7$) with a slope less than unity between the radio and X-ray surface brightness. We also report differences in the spatially resolved properties of the radio emission in clusters which show different levels of dynamical disturbance. In particular, less perturbed clusters (according to X-ray parameters) show peaked radio profiles in the centre, with a flattening in the outer regions, while the three dynamically disturbed clusters have steeper profiles in the outer regions. We fit a model to the radio emission in the context of turbulent re-acceleration with a constant ratio between thermal and non-thermal particles energy density and a magnetic field profile linked to the thermal gas density as $B(r) \propto n_{th}^{0.5}$. We found that this simple model cannot reproduce the behaviour of the observed radio emission., Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

The "Cluster HEritage project with \xmm: Mass Assembly and Thermodynamics at the Endpoint of structure formation" (CHEX-MATE) is a multi-year Heritage program, to obtain homogeneous XMM-Newton observations of a representative sample of 118 galaxy clusters. The observations are tuned to reconstruct the distribution of the main thermodynamic quantities of the ICM up to $R_{500}$ and to obtain individual mass measurements, via the hydrostatic-equilibrium equation, with a precision of 15-20%. Temperature profiles are a necessary ingredient for the scientific goals of the project and it is thus crucial to derive the best possible temperature measurements from our data. This is why we have built a new pipeline for spectral extraction and analysis of XMM-Newton data, based on a new physically motivated background model and on a Bayesian approach with Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, that we present in this paper for the first time. We applied this new method to a subset of 30 galaxy clusters representative of the CHEX-MATE sample and show that we can obtain reliable temperature measurements up to regions where the source intensity is as low as 20% of the background, keeping systematic errors below 10%. We compare the median profile of our sample and the best fit slope at large radii with literature results and we find a good agreement with other measurements based on XMM-Newton data. Conversely, when we exclude from our analysis the most contaminated regions, where the source intensity is below 20 of the background, we find significantly flatter profiles, in agreement with predictions from numerical simulations and independent measurements with a combination of Sunyaev-Zeldovich and X-ray imaging data., Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Table C.1. available in electronic format at http://xmm-heritage.oas.inaf.it/data/Rossetti24_table_cds.dat

We study the perturbations in the temperature (and density) distribution for 28 clusters selected from the CHEX-MATE sample to evaluate and characterize the level of inhomogeneities and the related dynamical state of the ICM. We use these spatially resolved 2D distributions to measure the global and radial scatter and identify the regions that deviate the most from the average distribution. During this process, we introduce three dynamical state estimators and produce clean temperature profiles after removing the most deviant regions. We find that the temperature distribution of most of the clusters is skewed towards high temperatures and is well described by a log-normal function. There is no indication that the number of regions deviating more than 1$\sigma$ from the azimuthal value is correlated with the dynamical state inferred from morphological estimators. The removal of these regions leads to local temperature variations up to 10-20% and an average increase of $\sim$5% in the overall cluster temperatures. The measured relative intrinsic scatter within $R_{500}$, $\sigma_{T,int}/T$, has values of 0.17$^{+0.08}_{-0.05}$, and is almost independent of the cluster mass and dynamical state. Comparing the scatter of temperature and density profiles to hydrodynamic simulations, we constrain the average Mach number regime of the sample to $M_{3D}$=0.36$^{+0.16}_{-0.09}$. We infer the ratio between the energy in turbulence and the thermal energy, and translate this ratio in terms of a predicted hydrostatic mass bias $b$, estimating an average value of $b\sim$0.11 (covering a range between 0 and 0.37) within $R_{500}$. This study provides detailed temperature fluctuation measurements for 28 CHEX-MATE clusters which can be used to study turbulence, derive the mass bias, and make predictions on the scaling relation properties., Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A

Temperature profiles of the hot galaxy cluster intracluster medium (ICM) have a complex non-linear structure that traditional parametric modelling may fail to fully approximate. For this study, we made use of neural networks, for the first time, to construct a data-driven non-parametric model of ICM temperature profiles. A new deconvolution algorithm was then introduced to uncover the true (3D) temperature profiles from the observed projected (2D) temperature profiles. An auto-encoder-inspired neural network was first trained by learning a non-linear interpolatory scheme to build the underlying model of 3D temperature profiles in the radial range of [0.02-2] R$_{500}$, using a sparse set of hydrodynamical simulations from the THREE HUNDRED PROJECT. A deconvolution algorithm using a learning-based regularisation scheme was then developed. The model was tested using high and low resolution input temperature profiles, such as those expected from simulations and observations, respectively. We find that the proposed deconvolution and deprojection algorithm is robust with respect to the quality of the data, the morphology of the cluster, and the deprojection scheme used. The algorithm can recover unbiased 3D radial temperature profiles with a precision of around 5\% over most of the fitting range. We apply the method to the first sample of temperature profiles obtained with XMM{\it -Newton} for the CHEX-MATE project and compared it to parametric deprojection and deconvolution techniques. Our work sets the stage for future studies that focus on the deconvolution of the thermal profiles (temperature, density, pressure) of the ICM and the dark matter profiles in galaxy clusters, using deep learning techniques in conjunction with X-ray, Sunyaev Zel'Dovich (SZ) and optical datasets., Comment: 32 pages, 30 figures, 6 tables, Accepted in A&A

The determination of the mass of galaxy clusters from observations is subject to systematic uncertainties. Beyond the errors due to instrumental and observational systematic effects, in this work we investigate the bias introduced by modelling assumptions. In particular, we consider the reconstruction of the mass of galaxy clusters from convergence maps employing spherical mass density models. We made use of The Three Hundred simulations, selecting clusters in the same redshift and mass range as the NIKA2 Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Large Programme sample: $3 \leq M_{500}/ 10^{14} \mathrm{M}_{\odot} \leq 10$ and $0.5 \leq z \leq 0.9$. We studied different modelling and intrinsic uncertainties that should be accounted for when using the single cluster mass estimates for scaling relations. We confirm that the orientation of clusters and the radial ranges considered for the fit have an important impact on the mass bias. The effect of the projection adds uncertainties to the order of $10\%$ to $16\%$ to the mass estimates. We also find that the scatter from cluster to cluster in the mass bias when using spherical mass models is less than $9\%$ of the true mass of the clusters.

We develop a machine learning algorithm to infer the 3D cumulative radial profiles of total and gas mass in galaxy clusters from thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect maps. We generate around 73,000 mock images along various lines of sight using 2,522 simulated clusters from the \thethreehundred{} project at redshift $z< 0.12$ and train a model that combines an autoencoder and a random forest. Without making any prior assumptions about the hydrostatic equilibrium of the clusters, the model is capable of reconstructing the total mass profile as well as the gas mass profile, which is responsible for the SZ effect. We show that the recovered profiles are unbiased with a scatter of about $10\%$, slightly increasing towards the core and the outskirts of the cluster. We selected clusters in the mass range of $10^{13.5} \leq M_{200} /(\hMsun) \leq 10^{15.5}$, spanning different dynamical states, from relaxed to disturbed halos. We verify that both the accuracy and precision of this method show a slight dependence on the dynamical state, but not on the cluster mass. To further verify the consistency of our model, we fit the inferred total mass profiles with an NFW model and contrast the concentration values with those of the true profiles. We note that the inferred profiles are unbiased for higher concentration values, reproducing a trustworthy mass-concentration relation. The comparison with a widely used mass estimation technique, such as hydrostatic equilibrium, demonstrates that our method recovers the total mass that is not biased by non-thermal motions of the gas., Comment: Accepted for publication on Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 8 pages, 10 figures

The NIKA2 Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Large Program (SZLP) is focused on mapping the thermal SZ signal of a representative sample of selected Planck and ACT clusters spanning the redshift range 0.5<$z$<0.9. Hydrodynamical N-body simulations prove to be a powerful tool to endorse NIKA2 capabilities for estimating the impact of IntraCluster Medium (ICM) disturbances when recovering the pressure radial profiles. For this goal we employ a subsample of objects, carefully extracted from the catalog "Marenostrum MUltidark SImulations of galaxy Clusters" (MUSIC), spanning equivalent redshift and mass ranges as the LPSZ. The joint analysis of real observations of the tSZ with NIKA2 and Planck enables to validate the NIKA2 pipeline and to estimate the ICM pressure profiles. Moreover, the possibility to identify "a priori" the dynamical state of the selected synthetic clusters allows us to verify the impact on the recovered ICM profile shapes and their scatters. Morphological analysis of maps of the Compton parameter seems to be a way to observationally segregate the sample based on the dynamical state in relaxed and disturbed synthetic clusters., Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; to appear in the proceedings of the international conference entitled "mm Universe @ NIKA2", Grenoble (France), June 2019, EPJ Web of conferences

Aims. We seek to probe the Galactic bulge IMF starting from microlensing observations. Methods. We analyse the recent results of the microlensing campaigns carried out towards the Galactic bulge presented by the EROS, MACHO and OGLE collaborations. In particular, we study the duration distribution of the events. We assume a power law initial mass function, $\xi(\mu)\propto \mu^{-\alpha}$, and we study the slope $\alpha$ both in the brown dwarf and in the main sequence ranges. Moreover, we compare the observed and expected optical depth profiles. Results. The values of the mass function slopes are strongly driven by the observed timescales of the microlensing events. The analysis of the MACHO data set gives, for the main sequence stars, $\alpha=1.7 \pm 0.5$, compatible with the result we obtain with the EROS and OGLE data sets, and a similar, though less constrained slope for brown dwarfs. The lack of short duration events in both EROS and OGLE data sets, on the other hand, only allows the determination of an \emph{upper} limit in this range of masses, making the overall result less robust. The optical depth analysis gives a very good agreement between the observed and the expected values, and we show that the available data do not allow one to discriminate between different bulge models., Comment: A&A in press - Minor changes to match the published version

The primary optical caustic surface behind a Kerr black hole is a four-cusped tube displaced from the line of sight. We derive the caustic surface in the nearly asymptotic region far from the black hole through a Taylor expansion of the lightlike geodesics up to and including fourth-order terms in m/b and a/b, where $m$ is the black hole mass, a the spin and b the impact parameter. The corresponding critical locus in the observer's sky is elliptical and a point-like source inside the caustics will be imaged as an Einstein cross. With regard to lensing near critical points, a Kerr lens is analogous to a circular lens perturbed by a dipole and a quadrupole potential. The caustic structure of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center could be probed by lensing of low mass X-ray binaries in the Galactic inner regions or by hot spots in the accretion disk., Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; v2: extended discussion, 2 figures added, results unchanged; in press on PRD

We present an analytical treatment of gravitational lensing by a Kerr black hole in the weak deflection limit. Lightlike geodesics are expanded as a Taylor series up to and including third-order terms in m/b and a/b, where m is the black hole mass, a the angular momentum and b the impact parameter of the light ray. Positions and magnifications of individual images are computed with a perturbative analysis. At this order, the degeneracy with the translated Schwarzschild lens is broken. The critical curve is still a circle displaced from the black hole position in the equatorial direction and the corresponding caustic is point-like. The degeneracy between the black hole spin and its inclination relative to the observer is broken through the angular coordinates of the perturbed images., Comment: 12 pages; minor changes to match the version in press on Phys. Rev. D

We carry on a new analysis of the sample of MACHO microlensing candidates towards the LMC. Our main purpose is to determine the lens population to which the events may belong. We give particular emphasis to the possibility of characterizing the Milky Way dark matter halo population with respect to the LMC one. Indeed, we show that only a fraction of the events have characteristics that match those expected for lenses belonging to the MACHO population of the Milky Way halo. This suggests that this component cannot explain all the candidates. Accordingly, we challenge the view that the dark matter halo fraction of both the Milky Way and the LMC halos are equal, and indeed we show that, for a MACHO mass in the range 0.1-0.3 M$_\odot$, the LMC halo fraction can be significantly larger than the Milky Way one. In this perspective, our main conclusion is that up to about half of the observed events could be attributed to the LMC MACHO dark matter halo., Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

We generalize our previous work on gravitational lensing by a Kerr black hole in the strong deflection limit, removing the restriction to observers on the equatorial plane. Starting from the Schwarzschild solution and adding corrections up to the second order in the black hole spin, we perform a complete analytical study of the lens equation for relativistic images created by photons passing very close to a Kerr black hole. We find out that, to the lowest order, all observables (including shape and shift of the black hole shadow, caustic drift and size, images position and magnification) depend on the projection of the spin on a plane orthogonal to the line of sight. In order to break the degeneracy between the black hole spin and its inclination relative to the observer, it is necessary to push the expansion to higher orders. In terms of future VLBI observations, this implies that very accurate measures are needed to determine these two parameters separately., Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, one section added, to appear on Physical Review D

In this paper we present an analytical treatment of gravitational lensing by Kerr black holes in the limit of very large deflection angles, restricting to observers in the equatorial plane. We accomplish our objective starting from the Schwarzschild black hole and adding corrections up to second order in the black hole spin. This is sufficient to provide a full description of all caustics and the inversion of lens mapping for sources near them. On the basis of these formulae we argue that relativistic images of Low Mass X-ray Binaries around Sgr A* are very likely to be seen by future X-ray interferometry missions., Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, published on Phys. Rev. D

Recent optical/UV data of Geminga (Mignani et al. 1998) have strengthen the significance of the emission feature present over the thermal continuum best fitting the EUV/soft X-ray data. Here we present a phenomenological model interpreting the data in terms of an ion cyclotron feature, arising from a thin outer layer of hot plasma covering Geminga's polar caps. The width of the feature favours for Geminga the strongly oblique rotator configuration, as already deduced from the soft X-ray data (Halpern & Ruderman 1993). Our interpretation implies a magnetic field of 3 - 5 10d11 G, consistent with the value deduced from the dynamical parameters of the pulsar. This would represent the first case of an independent measurement of the surface magnetic field of an isolated neutron star. The expected time modulation of Geminga's feature is also discussed., Comment: 7 pages, LaTex, 7 Postscript figures. Astronomy&Astrophysics-in press