paper

The Effect of Merger Boosts on the Luminosity, Temperature, and Inferred Mass Functions of Clusters of Galaxies

arXiv:astro-ph/0206161 · doi:10.1086/342239

Abstract

In the standard Cold Dark Matter model of structure formation, massive clusters form via the merger of smaller clusters. N-body/hydrodynamical simulations of merging galaxy clusters have shown that mergers can temporarily boost the X-ray luminosity and temperature of the merged cluster above the equilibrium values for the merged system. The cumulative effect of these "merger boosts" will affect the observed X-ray luminosity functions (XLFs) and temperature functions (TFs) of clusters. Merger boosts may bias the values of sigma_8 and Omega_0 inferred from cluster XLFs and TFs if virial equilibrium is assumed. We use a semi-analytic technique to estimate the effect of merger boosts on the X-ray luminosity and temperature functions. The boosts from individual mergers are derived from N-body/hydrodynamical simulations of mergers. The statistics of the merger histories of clusters are determined from extended Press-Schechter (PS) merger trees. We find that merger boosts can increase the apparent number of hot, luminous clusters. For example, in a Universe with Omega_0 = 0.3 and Omega_Lambda = 0.7 at a redshift of z=1, the number of clusters with temperatures T > 10 keV is increased by a factor of 9.5, and the number of clusters with luminosities L_X > 5x10^44 h^-2 erg/s is increased by a factor of 8.9. We have used our merger-boosted TFs and XLFs to derive the cosmological structure parameters sigma_8 and Omega_0 by fitting Press-Schechter equilibrium relations to local (z=0) and distant (either z=0.5 or z=1) cluster samples. Merger boosts cause sigma_8 to be overestimated by about 20%. The matter density parameter Omega_0 may be underestimated by about 20%, although this result is less clear.

accepted for publucation in ApJ. 40 pages, 10 figures

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