The XMM-BCS galaxy cluster survey: I. The X-ray selected cluster catalog from the initial 6 deg$^2$

• Main Authors: Šuhada, R., Song, J., Böhringer, H., Mohr, J. J., Chon, G., Finoguenov, A., Fassbender, R., Desai, S., Armstrong, R., Zenteno, A., Barkhouse, W. A., Bertin, E., Buckley-Geer, E. J., Hansen, S. M., High, F. W., Lin, H., Mühlegger, M., Ngeow, C. C., Pierini, D., Pratt, G. W., Verdugo, M., Tucker, D. L.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2011
• Subjects: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics astro-ph.CO; FOS Physical sciences; South Pole; Blanco; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1111.0141; https://arxiv.org/abs/1111.0141

The XMM-Newton - Blanco Cosmology Survey project (XMM-BCS) is a coordinated X-ray, optical and mid-infrared cluster survey in a field also covered by Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect surveys by the South Pole Telescope and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The aim of the project is to study the cluster population in a 14 deg$^2$ field. In this work, we present a catalog of 46 X-ray selected clusters from the initial 6 deg$^2$ survey core. We describe the XMM-BCS source detection pipeline and derive physical properties of the clusters. We provide photometric redshift estimates derived from the BCS imaging data and spectroscopic redshift measurements for a low redshift subset of the clusters. We derive the cluster log N - log S relation using an approximation to the survey selection function and find it in good agreement with previous studies. We carry out an initial comparison between X-ray luminosity derived masses and masses from optical estimators from the Southern Cosmology Survey for a subset of the cluster sample. Optical masses based on cluster richness and total optical luminosity are found to be significantly higher than the X-ray values. (abridged) : Accepted to A&A. Version with full resolution images and better layout is available at the author or at A&A. 34 pages, 35 figures, 18 tables