Combining optical and X-ray observations of galaxy clusters to constrain cosmological parameters

Galaxy clusters present unique advantages for cosmological study.Here we collect a new sample of 10 lensing galaxy clusters with X-ray observations to constrain cosmological parameters.The redshifts of the lensing clusters lie between 0.1 and 0.6,and the redshift range of their arcs is from 0.4 to 4.9.These clusters are selected carefully from strong gravitational lensing systems which have both X-ray satellite observations and optical giant luminous arcs with known redshifts.Giant arcs usually appear in the central region of clusters,where mass can be traced with luminosity quite well.Based on gravitational lensing theory and a cluster mass distribution model,we can derive a ratio using two angular diameter distances.One is the distance between lensing sources and the other is that between the deflector and the source. Since angular diameter distance relies heavily on cosmological geometry,we can use these ratios to constrain cosmological models.Moreover,X-ray gas fractions of galaxy clusters can also be a cosmological probe.Because there are a dozen parameters to be fitted,we introduce a new analytic algorithm,Powell＇s UOBYQA（Unconstrained Optimization By Quadratic Approximation） ,to accelerate our calculation.Our result demonstrates that this algorithm is an effective fitting method for such a continuous multi-parameter constraint.We find an interesting fact that these two approaches are separately sensitive toΩΛandΩM.By combining them,we can get reasonable fitting values of basic cosmological parameters：ΩM=0.26 ＋0.04 -0.04,andΩΛ=0.82 ＋0.14 -0.16.

The peculiar velocity and temperature profile of galaxy clusters

Dynamical parameters like average velocity dispersion and temperature profile of galaxy clusters are determined using the theory of quasi-equilibrium ther- modynamics. The calculated results of velocity dispersion show a good agreement between theory and simulations with the results of velocity dispersion from Abdullah et al. An adaptive mesh refinement grid-based hybrid code has been used to carry out the simulations. Our results indicate that the average velocity dispersion profile of 20 Abell galaxy clusters falls in the range of 500 - 1000 km s^-1 and their temperature profile is of the order of 10^7 to 10^8 K calculated on the basis of kinetic theory. The data in the plot show a significant contribution from gravitating particles clustering together in the vicinity of the cluster center and beyond a certain region this veloc- ity dies out and becomes dominated by the Hubble flow due to which all the galaxy clusters in an expanding universe participate in Hubble expansion.

Resolving the Mass Discrepancy between Strong and Weak Lensing Methods

We readdress the outstanding cluster mass discrepancy between strong and weak gravitational lensing techniques utilizing updated data of both giant arcs and weak lensing measurements from the literature. We find that the systematically higher values of cluster masses revealed by strong lensing can be attributed to the oversimplification of the lensing model when estimating the cluster mass enclosed within the giant arcs. This arises because inhomogeneities and substructures in the central cores of clusters may invalidate the spherical symmetry assumption used widely in previous applications. When a more realistic modeling of the arcs is used, then the masses by strong lensing agree fairly well with those given by weak lensing when both are extrapolated to the same cluster regions. We conclude that as of now no significant discrepancy has been found among different cluster mass estimators including optical galaxies, X-ray gas and lensing.

The effects of BCGs on the statistics of large-separation lensed quasars by clusters

We study the statistics of large-separation multiply-imaged quasars lensed by clusters of galaxies. In particular, we examine how the observed brightest cluster galaxies （BCGs） affect the predicted numbers of wide-separation lenses. We model the lens as an NFW-profiled dark matter halo with a truncated singular isothermal sphere to represent the BCG in its center. We mainly make predictions for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Lens Search （SQLS） sample from the Data Release 5 （DRS） in two standard ACDM cosmological models： a model with matter density ΩM = 0.3 and δ8 = 0.9, as is usually adopted in the literature （ACDM1）, and a model suggested by the WMAP seven-year （WMAPT） data with ΩM = 0.266 and δ8 = 0.801. We also study the lensing properties for the WMAP3 cosmology in order to compare with the previous work. We find that BCGs in the centers of clusters significantly enhance the lensing efficiency by a factor of 2 - 3 compared with that of NFW-profiled pure dark matter halos. In addition, the dependence of mass ratios of BCGs to their host halos on the host halo masses reduces the lensing rate by - 20% from assuming a constant ratio as in previous studies, but considering the evolution of this ratio with redshift out to z - 1 would reduce it by - 3%. Moreover, we predict that the numbers of lensed quasars with image separations larger than 10″ in the statistical sample of SQLS from DR5 are 1.22 and 0.47, respectively for ACDM1 and WMAP7 and 0.73 and 0.33 for separations between 10″ and 20″, which are consistent with the only observed cluster lens with such a large separation in the complete SQLS sample.