A New Dynamical Mass Measurement for the Virgo Cluster using the Radial Velocity Profile of the Filament Galaxies

Abstract

The radial velocities of the galaxies in the vicinity of a cluster shows deviation from the pure Hubble flow due to their gravitational interaction with the cluster. According to a recent study of Falco et al. (2014) based on a high-resolution N-body simulation, the radial velocity profile of the galaxies located at distances larger than three times the virial radius of a neighbor cluster can be well approximated by a universal formula and could be reconstructed from direct observables provided that the galaxies are distributed along one dimensional filament. They suggested an algorithm for the estimation of the dynamic mass of a cluster $M_{\mathrm{v}}$ by fitting the universal formula from the simulation to the reconstructed radial velocity profile of the filament galaxies around the cluster from observations. We apply the algorithm to two narrow straight filaments (called the Filament A and B) that were identified recently by Kim et al. (2015) in the vicinity of the Virgo cluster from the NASA-Sloan-Atlas catalog. The dynamical mass of the Virgo cluster is estimated to be $M_{\mathrm{v}}=(0.84_{-0.51}^{+2.75})\times 10^{15}{h}^{-1}{M}_{\odot }$ and $M_{\mathrm{v}}=(3.24_{-1.31}^{+4.99})\times 10^{15}{h}^{-1}{M}_{\odot }$ for the cases of the Filament A and B, respectively. We discuss observational and theoretical systematics intrinsic to the method of Falco et al. (2014) as well as the physical implication of the final results.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in ApJ, 8 figures, 1 table, in the revised version, the focus made on the new dynamical mass measurement of the Virgo cluster included, inferred radial velocity profile of the filament galaxies plotted and compared with the expected one from simulations, dependence of the mass estimate on the filament shape shown and possible systematics discussed

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