Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2011-01-11
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
5 pages. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. This includes a correction: the published version neglected surface pressure
Scientific paper
The accurate determination of cluster total mass is crucial for their use as probes of cosmology. Recently, the Sunyaev--Zel'dovich effect (SZE) has been exploited in surveys to find galaxy clusters, but X-ray or lensing follow up observations, or empirically-determined scaling relations between SZE flux and total mass, have been required to estimate their masses. Here we demonstrate a new method of mass determination from SZE observations, applicable in the absence of X-ray or lensing data. This method relies on the virial relation and a minimal set of assumptions, following an approach analogous to that used for stellar structure. By exploiting the virial relation, we implicitly incorporate an additional constraint from thermodynamics that is not used in deriving the equation of hydrostatic equilibrium. This allows us to relate cluster total mass directly to the robustly-determined quantity, the integrated SZE flux.
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