On the Dynamical Origin of Bias in Clusters of Galaxies

The use of galaxy clusters as cosmological probes hinges on our ability to measure their masses accurately and with high precision. Hydrostatic mass is one of the most common methods for estimating the masses of individual galaxy clusters, which suffer from biases due to departures from hydrostatic equilibrium. Using a large, mass-limited sample of massive galaxy clusters from a high-resolution hydrodynamical cosmological simulation, in this work we show that in addition to t...

We present a new proxy for the overdensity peak height for which the large-scale clustering of haloes of a given mass does not vary significantly with the assembly history. The peak height, usually taken to be well represented by the virial mass, can instead be approximated by the mass inside spheres of different radii, which in some cases can be larger than the virial radius and therefore include mass outside the individual host halo. The sphere radii are defined as r = $a$ ...

This paper reviews the measurements of galaxy correlations at high redshifts, and discusses how these may be understood in models of hierarchical gravitational collapse. The clustering of galaxies at redshift one is much weaker than at present, and this is consistent with the rate of growth of structure expected in an open universe. If $\Omega=1$, this observation would imply that bias increases at high redshift, in conflict with observed $M/L$ values for known high-$z$ clust...

We use gas dynamic simulations to explore the effects of galactic winds on galaxy clusters. Two ensembles of 18 realizations, spanning a decade in temperature, are evolved with and without winds in an underlying biased CDM cosmology. Galaxies are identified as peaks in the initial density field, and are assumed to lose half their initial mass over a Hubble time in winds with an effective temperature of 8 keV. The energy input through winds boosts the entropy of the ICM above ...

In this work, we examine the effects of mergers on the hydrostatic mass estimate of galaxy clusters using high-resolution Eulerian cosmological simulations. We utilize merger trees to isolate the last merger for each cluster in our sample and follow the time evolution of the hydrostatic mass bias as the systems relax. We find that during a merger, a shock propagates outward from the parent cluster, resulting in an overestimate in the hydrostatic mass bias. After the merger, a...

It is a well-established fact that massive cosmological objects exhibit a ``geometrical bias'' that boosts their spatial correlations with respect to the underlying mass distribution. Although this geometrical bias is a simple function of mass, this is only half of the story. We show using numerical simulations that objects that are in the midst of accreting material also exhibit a ``temporal bias,'' which further boosts their clustering far above geometrical bias levels. The...

We solve numerically the equations of motion for the collapse of a shell of baryonic matter, made of galaxies and substructure of $ 10^{6} M_{\odot}- 10^{9} M_{\odot}$, falling into the central regions of a cluster of galaxies taking account of dynamical friction. We calculate the evolution of the expansion parameter, a(t), of the perturbation using a coefficient of dynamical friction, $ \eta_{0}$, calculated for a perturbation in which clustering is absent and a coefficient ...

We discuss how the centres of galaxy clusters evolve in time, showing the results of a series of direct N-body simulations. In particular, we followed the evolution of a galaxy cluster with a mass $M_{clus} \simeq 10^{14} $M$_{\odot}$ in different configurations. The dynamical evolution of the system leads in all the cases to the formation of dense and massive sub-structures in the cluster centre, that form in consequence of a series of collisions and merging among galaxies t...

Using a set of 73 numerically simulated galaxy clusters, we have characterised the statistical and physical biases for three velocity dispersion and mass estimators, namely biweight, gapper and standard deviation, in the small number of galaxies regime ($N_{gal} \leq 75$), both for the determination of the velocity dispersion and the dynamical mass of the clusters via the $\sigma-M$ relation. These results are used to define a new set of unbiased estimators, that are able to ...

We reconsider the problem of the origin of Low-Surface-Brightness (LSB) galaxies within the standard Cold Dark Matter (CDM) cosmological model ($\Omega =1, h=0.5$). Taking into account the effect of substructure on the collapse times of low overdensity peaks, we show that the abundance of these peaks is larger than previously expected because of the dragging caused by dynamical friction induced by the presence of small-scale substructure. The number density of these shallow, ...