Probing hot gas in galaxy groups through the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect

• Published in: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Main Authors: Li, Ran, Mo, H. J., Fan, Zuhui, van den Bosch, Frank C., Yang, Xiaohu
• Other Authors: Li, R (reprint author), Peking Univ, Dept Astron, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China., Peking Univ, Dept Astron, Beijing 100871, Peoples R China., Univ Massachusetts, Dept Astron, Amherst, MA 01003 USA., Univ Utah, Dept Phys & Astron, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA., Yale Univ, Dept Astron, New Haven, CT 06520 USA., Shanghai Astron Observ, Partner Grp MPA, Shanghai 200030, Peoples R China.
• Format: Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 皇家天文学会月报 2011
• Subjects: methods: statistical; galaxies: clusters: general; galaxies: haloes; cosmology: theory; dark matter; large-scale structure of Universe; DIGITAL SKY SURVEY; DARK-MATTER HALOES; X-RAY-CLUSTERS; SOUTH-POLE TELESCOPE; OCCUPATION STATISTICS; SATELLITE KINEMATICS; WMAP OBSERVATIONS; DENSITY PROFILE; REDSHIFT SURVEY; XMM-NEWTON; South Pole; South pole
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11897/148562; https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18378.x

We investigate the potential of exploiting the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) to study the properties of hot gas in galaxy groups. It is shown that, with upcoming SZE surveys, one can stack SZE maps around galaxy groups of similar halo masses selected from large galaxy redshift surveys to study the hot gas in haloes represented by galaxy groups. We use various models for the hot halo gas to study how the expected SZE signals are affected by gas fraction, equation of state, halo concentration and cosmology. Comparing the model predictions with the sensitivities expected from the South Pole Telescope (SPT), Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and Planck surveys shows that a SPT-like survey can provide stringent constraints on the hot gas properties for haloes with masses M greater than or similar to 1013 h-1 M-circle dot. We also explore the idea of using the cross-correlation between hot gas and galaxies of different luminosity to probe the hot gas in dark matter haloes without identifying galaxy groups to represent dark haloes. Our results show that, with a galaxy survey as large as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and with the help of the conditional luminosity function model, one can obtain stringent constraints on the hot gas properties in haloes with masses down to 1013 h-1 M-circle dot. Thus, the upcoming SZE surveys should provide a very promising avenue to probe the hot gas in relatively low-mass haloes where the majority of L* galaxies reside. Astronomy & Astrophysics SCI(E) 2 ARTICLE 4 3039-3058 413