GeminiFocus July 2013 | Page 10

clusively with GMOS observations to obtain dynamical masses for a clean sub-sample of clusters (Sifón et al., in preparation). Figure 3. Constraints on cosmological parameters when dynamical masses from ACT are included. The black contours show the best-fit parameters obtained from WMAP-7 observations, and the green contours show the results when combining WMAP-7 with ACT clusters, including the dynamical masses of the southern sample. The blue dashed and black dotted contours show the results when combining information from WMAP, baryon acoustic oscillations and the Hubble constant from measurements of the distance ladder, with and without ACT cluster information, respectively. In Hasselfield et al. (2013), we have used this “equatorial sample” to obtain cosmological constraints from cluster number counts. As has been shown before, we find that the calibration of the SZE-mass relation is the critical missing ingredient that will allow us to fully understand the cosmological implications of this sample. Figure 3 shows the constraining power of the ACT sample when the dynamical masses are included in the fit (Hasselfield et al., 2013), specifically for the characteristic amplitude of matter fluctuations, s8, and the density of matter, Wm. The black contours show the best-fit parameters obtained from Sevenyear Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP-7) observations, and the green contours show the results when combining WMAP-7 with ACT clusters, including the dynamical masses of the southern sample. The blue dashed and black dotted contours show the results when combining information from WMAP, baryon acoustic oscillations and the Hubble constant from measurements of the distance ladder, with and without ACT cluster information, respectively. The dynamical masses provide improvements on cosmological parameter constraints because they impose strong restrictions on the scaling relations. (In statistical terminology, they are “tight priors.”) Our ongoing analysis of recent GMOS observations for the equatorial sample will provide a firmer basis for using galaxy clusters as precision probes of cosmology. This work constituted the bulk of C. Sifón’s MSc thesis at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, which was completed in January 2012. Cristóbal Sifón is a PhD student at Leiden Observatory. He can be reached at: [email protected] Felipe Menanteau is a research associate at Rutgers University. He can be reached at: [email protected] John P. Hughes is a professor at Rutgers University. He can be reached at: [email protected] L. Felipe Barrientos is a professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He can be reached at: [email protected] References Hasselfield, M., et al., “The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Selected Galaxy Clusters at 148 GHz from Three Seasons of Data,” submitted to Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, arXiv:1301.0816, 2013 Marriage, T. A., et al., “The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Selected Galaxy Clusters at 148 GHz in the 2008 Survey,” The Astrophysical Journal, 737: p. 61, 2011 Menanteau, F., et al., “The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Physical Properties and Purity of a Galaxy Cluster Sample Selected via the SunyaevZel’dovich Effect,” The Astrophysical Journal, 723: p. 1523, 2010 Sifón, C., et al., “The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Dynamical Masses and Scaling Relations for a Sample of Massive Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect Selected Galaxy Clusters,” accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, arXiv:1201.0991, 2013 10 GeminiFocus July2013