Interpreting High Resolution Sunyaev Zel'dovich Effect Measurements with MUSTANG 1240 views

We present pressure profiles of galaxy clusters determined from high resolution Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (SZ) effect observations in fourteen clusters, which span the red- shift range 0.25 < z < 0.89. We assume spherical geometry for our pressure profiles and compare to pressure profiles derived from X-ray analysis (ACCEPT catalog), which also assumes a spherical geometry. A technique to jointly fit SZ data from the Bolocam and MUSTANG instruments is developed and implemented to determine cluster pressure profiles. Bolocam is a bolometer array on the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO) with a resolution of 58′′ and 8′ field of view (FOV), and MUSTANG is a bolometer array on the 100-m Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) with a resolution of 9′′ and FOV of 42′′. Jointly, these two instruments allow a wide range of spatial scales to be constrained by solely SZ observations. Most notably, MUSTANG is one of a few SZ instruments with high resolution, and provides unique insight into the pressure in the core of galaxy clusters. Our constraints on pressure profile parameters are consistent with those in pre- vious studies, but on individual clusters we find discrepancies with pressure profiles from ACCEPT. We investigate potential sources of these discrepancies, especially in the context of cluster geometry, electron temperature of the intracluster medium, and substructure. Additionally, efforts to prepare for the upcoming MUSTANG-2 are presented. In a desire to identify the preferred materials for the dewar window and radome, we investigate the transmission properties of several potential materials. We also model shocks in the plane of the sky to estimate the sensitivity necessary to observe shocks.

PHD (Doctor of Philosophy)

Galaxy Clusters; Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect

English

All rights reserved (no additional license for public reuse)

2015-07-17