Multi-frequency imaging of the galaxy cluster Abell 2163 using the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect

¹ Argelander Institute for Astronomy, Bonn University, Bonn, Germany e-mail: mnord@astro.uni-bonn.de
² Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, 53121 Bonn, Germany
³ School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, CF24 3YB Wales, UK
⁴ Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA
⁵ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
⁶ National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, 80305, USA
⁷ Physics Department, McGill University, H2T 2Y8 Montreal, Canada
⁸ Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers University of Technology, 43992 Onsala, Sweden
⁹ D-Wave Systems Inc., Burnaby, V5C 6G9, Canada
¹⁰ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

Received: 29 January 2009
Accepted: 23 July 2009

Abstract

Context. Observations of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) from galaxy clusters are emerging as a powerful tool in cosmology. Besides large cluster surveys, resolved SZE images of individual clusters can shed light on the physics of the intra-cluster medium (ICM) and allow accurate measurements of the cluster gas and total masses.

Aims. We used the APEX-SZ and LABOCA bolometer cameras on the APEX telescope to map both the decrement of the SZE at 150 GHz and the increment at 345 GHz toward the rich and X-ray luminous galaxy cluster Abell 2163 at redshift 0.203. The SZE images were used, in conjunction with archival XMM-Newton X-ray data, to model the radial density and temperature distribution of the ICM, as well as to derive the gas mass fraction in the cluster under the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium.

Methods. We describe the data analysis techniques developed to extract the faint and extended SZE signal. We used the isothermal β model to fit the SZE decrement/increment radial profiles. We performed a simple, non-parametric de-projection of the radial density and temperature profiles, in conjunction with X-ray data, under the simplifying assumption of spherical symmetry. We combined the peak SZE signals derived in this paper with published SZE measurements of this cluster to derive the cluster line-of-sight bulk velocity and the central Comptonization, using priors on the ICM temperature.

Results. We find that the best-fit isothermal model to the SZE data is consistent with the ICM properties implied by the X-ray data, particularly inside the central 1 Mpc radius. Inside a radius of ~1500 kpc from the cluster center, the mean gas temperature derived from our SZE/X-ray joint analysis is 10.4 ± 1.4 keV. The error budget for the derived temperature profile is dominated by statistical errors in the 150 GHz SZE image. From the isothermal analysis combined with previously published data, we find a line-of-sight peculiar velocity consistent with zero; v_r = -140 ± 460 km s^-1, and a central Comptonization  ± 0.32  10^-4 for Abell 2163.

Conclusions. Although the assumptions of hydrostatic equilibrium and spherical symmetry may not be optimal for this complex system, the results obtained under these assumptions are consistent with X-ray and weak-lensing measurements. This shows the applicability of the simple joint SZE and X-ray de-projection technique described in this paper for clusters with a wide range of dynamical states.