Extending empirical constraints on the SZ–mass scaling relation to higher redshifts via HST weak lensing measurements of nine clusters from the SPT-SZ survey at z ≳ 1

¹ Argelander Institut für Astronomie, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Auf dem Hügel 71, 53121 Bonn, Germany
e-mail: hzohren@astro.uni-bonn.de
² Faculty of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Scheinerstr. 1, 81679 München, Germany
³ Excellence Cluster ORIGINS, Boltzmannstr. 2, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁴ School of Physics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia
⁵ Department of Physics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45221, USA
⁶ High Energy Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL 60439, USA
⁷ Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
⁸ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
⁹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Missouri–Kansas City, 5110 Rockhill Road, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA
¹⁰ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, 5640 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
¹¹ Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
¹² Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (MPIA), Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
¹³ Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 1085 S. University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
¹⁴ Ruhr University Bochum, Faculty of Physics and Astronomy, Astronomical Institute (AIRUB), German Centre for Cosmological Lensing, 44780 Bochum, Germany

Received: 23 December 2021
Accepted: 13 August 2022

Abstract

We present a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) weak gravitational lensing study of nine distant and massive galaxy clusters with redshifts 1.0 ≲ z ≲ 1.7 (z_median = 1.4) and Sunyaev Zel’dovich (SZ) detection significance ξ > 6.0 from the South Pole Telescope Sunyaev Zel’dovich (SPT-SZ) survey. We measured weak lensing galaxy shapes in HST/ACS F606W and F814W images and used additional observations from HST/WFC3 in F110W and VLT/FORS2 in U_HIGH to preferentially select background galaxies at z ≳ 1.8, achieving a high purity. We combined recent redshift estimates from the CANDELS/3D-HST and HUDF fields to infer an improved estimate of the source redshift distribution. We measured weak lensing masses by fitting the tangential reduced shear profiles with spherical Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) models. We obtained the largest lensing mass in our sample for the cluster SPT-CL J2040−4451, thereby confirming earlier results that suggest a high lensing mass of this cluster compared to X-ray and SZ mass measurements. Combining our weak lensing mass constraints with results obtained by previous studies for lower redshift clusters, we extended the calibration of the scaling relation between the unbiased SZ detection significance ζ and the cluster mass for the SPT-SZ survey out to higher redshifts. We found that the mass scale inferred from our highest redshift bin (1.2 < z < 1.7) is consistent with an extrapolation of constraints derived from lower redshifts, albeit with large statistical uncertainties. Thus, our results show a similar tendency as found in previous studies, where the cluster mass scale derived from the weak lensing data is lower than the mass scale expected in a PlanckνΛCDM (i.e. νΛ cold dark matter) cosmology given the SPT-SZ cluster number counts.