A&A 418, 413-418 (2004)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20035763
M. Bartelmann1 - M. Meneghetti2
1 - ITA, Universität Heidelberg, Tiergartenstr. 15, 69121
Heidelberg, Germany
2 -
Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Padova, vicolo
dell'Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy
Received 28 November 2003 / Accepted 6 February 2004
Abstract
It was recently claimed that several galaxy clusters containing
radial and tangential gravitational arcs and having a measured
velocity-dispersion profile for the brightest cluster galaxy had to
have central density profiles considerably flatter than those found
in CDM cluster simulations. Using a simple analytic mass model, we
confirm this result for axially symmetric mass
distributions. However, we demonstrate that steep density profiles
are well in agreement with the cluster requiring the flattest
axially symmetric profile once even small deviations from axial
symmetry are introduced.
Key words: gravitational lensing - galaxies: clusters: general - cosmology: dark matter
Are observed gravitational arcs in galaxy clusters compatible with the density profiles produced in cold dark matter (CDM) simulations, which consistently find that the dark-matter density increases towards halo centres as r-1 or steeper? Building upon a suggestion by Miralda-Escudé (1995), Sand et al. (2003, hereafter STSE) analysed six galaxy clusters containing tangential arcs, three of which also contain radial arcs. Apart from the lensing data, the method uses constraints on the mass profile derived from the dynamics of the central cluster galaxies, specifically from its velocity dispersion profile (see also Sand et al. 2002).
The method sets strong constraints. In a cluster showing both radial and tangential arcs, the velocity dispersion measurement essentially fixes the mass divided by the radius. Radial arcs constrain the slope of the projected mass profile at their location, and tangential arcs constrain the total mass enclosed by their radial distance from the cluster centre. Using this technique, STSE find that their sample of six clusters is incompatible with dark-matter density profiles proportional to r-1 or steeper, but consistently require profiles as flat as r-0.5.
If true, this result would be of great importance for CDM because such flat profiles are not found in simulations. However, the analysis by STSE is based on the assumption of axial symmetry. We re-analyse their constraints here for the cluster Abell 383, whose density profile is apparently showing the most significant discrepancy compared to simulated CDM density profiles. In doing so, we describe the lens model and its parameters in Sect. 2 and illustrate the basic reason why the method strongly prefers a shallow central density profile. We introduce ellipticity in Sect. 3 and illustrate its substantial impact. Section 4 summarises that even moderate ellipticity can easily remove the discrepancy between the lensing observations in Abell 383 and the typical CDM halo profiles.
Like STSE, we use a
CDM cosmological model with matter
density
,
cosmological constant
,
and Hubble constant
.
Our lens model is adapted from STSE. It consists of a model for the
dark-matter halo,
The brightest cluster galaxy, assumed to be concentric with the
cluster, adds matter density to the cluster centre. Following the
light profile, it is assumed to have a Jaffe (1983) density profile,
Lensing properties are straightforwardly derived from these density
profiles. The convergence
for the dark-matter halo is
The circular velocity for an spherically symmetric density profile is
Aiming at the cluster Abell 383 which produced the most significant deviation from the numerically simulated dark-matter profiles in the study by STSE, we adopt the fixed parameters listed in Table 1.
Table 1:
Fixed parameters assumed for the lensing analysis in this
paper, taken from STSE. The two remaining parameters, i.e. the
density profile slope
and the ratio of masses
contributed by the dark-matter and galaxy density profiles contained
within the Jaffe radius, are taken as free parameters.
![]() |
Figure 1:
Radial profiles are shown for the lensing convergence
|
| Open with DEXTER | |
The convergence, deflection-angle and radial and tangential eigenvalue
profiles
,
,
and
are displayed in Fig. 1 for
and mass ratio
.
The figure illustrates that the
(projected) density profile near the cluster centre is dominated by
the near-isothermal slope of the brightest cluster galaxy. Near the
Jaffe radius, it flattens towards the central slope of the dark-matter
density profile, and then steepens towards
as
x approaches unity. Interestingly, the radial eigenvalue profile has
two roots, indicating the presence of two radial critical curves. For
Abell 383, the inner radial critical curve is too close to the cluster
centre to have any practical relevance, but clusters at more
favourable redshifts might show signatures of a double radial critical
curve. This is an interesting feature of the combination of a steep,
near-isothermal galaxy profile embedded in a relatively flat
dark-matter halo.
Having defined the axially symmetric lens model, the constraints
imposed by the central velocity dispersion, the radial and the
tangential arcs are straightforwardly understood. The central velocity
dispersion is almost exclusively contributed by the mass associated
with the brightest cluster galaxy because M/r tends to zero for
for the flatter dark-matter density profile. In contrast, the
tangential arc is located at a radius which encloses a mean
surface-mass density of unity. A first constraint thus derives from
the requirement to have the central cluster mass dominated by the
brightest cluster galaxy, and yet to have sufficient mass in the
dark-matter halo to produce tangential arcs at relatively large
cluster-centric radii. In the axially symmetric models, this is
achieved by flattening the dark-matter density profile.
A second constraint is imposed by the radial critical curve, where the derivative of the deflection angle reaches unity. For the Jaffe profile alone, the deflection angle is flat. It steepens as the total density profile becomes flatter at radii where the dark matter starts dominating, then flattens again as the cluster-centric radius approaches the scale radius of the dark-matter profile. If the dark-matter density profile is relatively flat, the increase of the deflection-angle slope occurs closer to the brightest cluster galaxy than for a steeper dark-matter profile. The second constraint thus derives from the requirement of having a radial arc rather close to the brightest cluster galaxy, while the first constraint requires a tangential arc rather far away from the cluster centre.
Figure 2 illustrates the situation. The abscissa is the mass
ratio between dark and luminous constituents within the Jaffe
radius. The ordinate is the cluster-centric radius in kpc. The
horizontal bars mark the radial and tangential arc locations in
Abell 383 with their respective uncertainties. The curves in the upper
and lower halves of the figure show the tangential and radial critical
radii, respectively, for dark-matter profiles with four different
central slopes,
,
as marked in the
plot.
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Figure 2:
Illustration of the radial and tangential critical radii for
an axially symmetric lens model composed of a central Jaffe profile
and a dark matter profile with four different values for the central
slope,
|
| Open with DEXTER | |
A model can explain both the radial and the tangential arc if there is
a single mass ratio for which the radial critical curve falls into the
lower horizontal band, and the tangential critical curve falls into
the upper horizontal band. Figure 2 confirms the result by
STSE regarding Abell 383. Only for shallow central density profiles,
,
can the position of both the tangential and the radial
arc be understood. For a mass ratio near 60, the lens model has radial
and tangential critical curves in the observed ranges. Steeper mass
profiles, e.g. the NFW model with
,
either have the
tangential arc in the right range if the mass ratio is
90, but
then the radial arc is too distant from the cluster centre, or the
radial arc location is reproduced if the mass ratio is
70, but
then the tangential arc is much too close to the cluster centre. The
core of the problem is thus that the location of the radial arc
requires a relatively low cluster mass, and then a steep mass profile
forces the tangential arc too close to the cluster centre.
These conclusions are valid for axially symmetric lens models. As we shall show now, the situation changes considerably if deviations from axial symmetry are allowed.
As a simple model for asymmetry, we deform the lens model such that
iso-contour lines of the lensing potential
are ellipses. We thus
introduce the radial coordinate
Being the gradient of
,
the deflection angle
now
has the components
Elliptical distortions of the lensing potential lead to
dumbbell-shaped surface-mass distributions if
becomes
large,
say, depending on the density
profile. This is certainly unwanted for galaxy-sized lenses, but not
necessarily for cluster lenses which are often highly structured. In
any case, we shall see below that the impact of a small ellipticity
on the location of the critical curves is identical for
lenses with elliptical iso-potential curves and axially symmetric
lenses embedded into external shear.
Ellipticity stretches the tangential critical curves along the major axis of the ellipse and shrinks them along the minor axis, and deforms the radial critical curve in the perpendicular direction. This implies that the cluster-centric distance of the critical curves now covers a range of radii. This range is surprisingly wide even for small ellipticities, as Fig. 3 illustrates.
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Figure 3:
Changes in the location of the radial and tangential critical
curves in response to a moderate elliptical distortion of the
lensing potential. The figure is arranged to resemble
Fig. 2, but showing results for |
| Open with DEXTER | |
The figure is arranged in the same way as Fig. 2 and also
specialised for the cluster Abell 383. The radius from the cluster
centre is plotted against the mass ratio between cluster and brightest
cluster galaxy for different central slopes
of the cluster
density profile. The observed locations of the tangential and radial
arcs are marked as horizontal bars. For clarity, we now show results
for two values of
only,
,
but illustrate
with three curves for each
the radial range covered by the
tangential and radial critical curves for a small ellipticity
parameter
.
For a fixed mass ratio, the radial range is
given by the vertical distance between the top and bottom curves of
the same type. Conversely, for a fixed radius, the horizontal distance
between the left and right curves of the same type show the range of
mass ratios for which arcs at that radius can be produced somewhere
along the respective critical curves. The central curves reproduce the
critical radii for the axially symmetric case.
Evidently, the impact of the small ellipticity
on the
location of the critical curves is quite large. For the shallow
profile,
,
and a mass ratio of 60, the tangential
critical radius ranges from 27 to 70 kpc, while the axially
symmetric result is 45. For the same mass ratio and density-profile
slope of
,
the radial critical radius ranges between 3and 19 kpc around the axially-symmetric value of 7 kpc. Thus, even
the low ellipticity of
makes the location of the
tangential and radial critical curves vary by about a factor of 1.5and more than a factor of two, respectively, around the
cluster. Interestingly, the radial ranges for tangential and radial
critical curves now overlap even for the steep profile with
.
For a mass ratio of
80, the observed positions of
both the radial and the tangential arcs fall within the ranges allowed
by the model.
These results can be reproduced analytically. For coordinate axes
aligned with the elliptical iso-potential contours, the minimum and
maximum values of the critical radii occur on the axes. The
intersection of the tangential critical curve with the x1-axis
satisfies
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Figure 4:
Relative shift per unit ellipticity,
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| Open with DEXTER | |
The figure shows that, for a mass ratio of 60 and a central density
slope of
,
the relative shifts for
are of
order
for the radial critical curve, and
for the
tangential critical curve, confirming the numerical results
illustrated in Fig. 3. For the steeper profile with
,
the respective relative changes are of order
and
for the same mass ratio and ellipticity.
It is straightforward to show that the first-order results
(15) and (16) remain valid if the lens model is not
itself deformed, but embedded into an external shear
.
In that
case,
simply replaces
in these equations which
are otherwise unchanged.
Equations (15) and (16) show that the amount by
which ellipticity or shear shift the critical curves depends highly
sensitively on the slope of the convergence profile
.
For a
singular isothermal sphere, for instance,
at the location
of the tangential critical curve, which is at x=1. Thus,
in this case. Flatter profiles,
however, have
closer to unity in Eq. (15) because
the tangential critical radius encloses a mean convergence of
unity. The relative shift of the tangential critical curve is thus
amplified for flatter density profiles, as illustrated in
Fig. 4 for the two choices of
.
As the figure also
shows, the situation is more extreme for the radial critical
curve. Flatter profiles are thus much more sensitive to external shear
or internal ellipticity than steeper profiles.
We illustrate the analytic results obtained above using a numerically
simulated galaxy cluster as a lens. It is located at redshift
z=0.297 and has a virial mass of
.
The cluster was kindly made
available by Klaus Dolag. It was obtained by resimulating at higher
resolution a sub-volume of an existing large-scale numerical
simulation of the
CDM model with parameters
,
,
and
normalisation
,
following the technique described in
Tormen et al. (2003). The particle mass in the resimulation is
and the gravitational softening
length was set to
.
We first use the cluster as it is, i.e. with the asymmetry and substructure produced by the simulation, and then progressively smooth and circularise it by computing its azimuthally-averaged density profile, subtracting it from the cluster, smoothing the residual density distribution by a varying amount, and finally adding the axially symmetric density profile back on the smoothed residuals. Using a normalised smoothing kernel, this procedure preserves the total mass and the mean density profile of the cluster.
| |
Figure 5: Critical curves of a simulated cluster in various stages of smoothing. As described in the text, the smoothing procedure conserves the total cluster mass and its density profile by construction. The ragged line is the original critical curve. Even moderate smoothing makes the critical curves shrink and considerably reduces the radial range where tangential and radial arcs can be found. |
| Open with DEXTER | |
Figure 5 illustrates the effect of the progressive smoothing on the critical curves. The ragged lines show the critical curve of the original clusters, while the approximately elliptical, smooth curves are the critical curves of the cluster after smoothing. Evidently, smoothing makes the critical curves shrink considerably, and, more importantly for our discussion, the radial range covered by the critical curves narrows substantially while the mean density profile remains entirely unchanged by construction. Arguments based on the cluster-centric distance of radial and tangential arcs thus need to take the detailed cluster structure into account.
Galaxy clusters containing radial and tangential gravitational arcs and a brightest cluster galaxy with a measured velocity dispersion apparently require significantly flatter density profiles than obtained in numerical simulations of CDM cosmologies. As shown here, this is essentially caused by the large observed cluster-centric distances of tangential arcs, which require fairly flat density profiles given the central constraints of radial arcs and the velocity-dispersion measurement. Using a simple analytic mass model, we can confirm the results by STSE, provided the lensing mass distribution is axially symmetric.
Allowing deviations from axial symmetry, the results radically
change. We have chosen to introduce asymmetry by elliptically
distorting the lensing potential, but showed that embedding the
axially symmetric lens in external shear has identical consequences in
the limit of small ellipticity or shear. Based on these results, we
have shown that the particular cluster which most significantly
required a flat density profile in the analysis by STSE, Abell 383, is
compatible with an NFW profile (
)
even for the small
ellipticity of
.
Critical curves caused by flat density profiles are extremely sensitive to distortions, as demonstrated in Sect. 3.2 and illustrated in Fig. 4. Shifting tangential critical curves by 20% to 40%, and radial critical curves by 50% to 100% even with an ellipticity or shear of only 0.1 is possible in particular for the profiles as flat as proposed by STSE. This is also the reason why the analysis of cluster ellipticity carried out by STSE themselves concluded that ellipticity had a negligible effect on their results: their lens model used components with isothermal density profiles which are much less sensitive to external shear or distortions, as illustrated by Eqs. (15) and (16).
We conclude that radial and tangential arcs in clusters do not rule out central density profiles as steep as found in CDM simulations once effects of asymmetry and shear are taken into account. We will extend our analysis towards numerically simulated clusters in a forthcoming paper.