English

Cluster-lensing: A Python Package for Galaxy Clusters & Miscentering

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics 2016-12-14 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We describe a new open source package for calculating properties of galaxy clusters, including NFW halo profiles with and without the effects of cluster miscentering. This pure-Python package, cluster-lensing, provides well-documented and easy-to-use classes and functions for calculating cluster scaling relations, including mass-richness and mass-concentration relations from the literature, as well as the surface mass density Σ(R)\Sigma(R) and differential surface mass density ΔΣ(R)\Delta\Sigma(R) profiles, probed by weak lensing magnification and shear. Galaxy cluster miscentering is especially a concern for stacked weak lensing shear studies of galaxy clusters, where offsets between the assumed and the true underlying matter distribution can lead to a significant bias in the mass estimates if not accounted for. This software has been developed and released in a public GitHub repository, and is licensed under the permissive MIT license. The cluster-lensing package is archived on Zenodo (Ford 2016). Full documentation, source code, and installation instructions are available at http://jesford.github.io/cluster-lensing/.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1605.05700,
  title  = {Cluster-lensing: A Python Package for Galaxy Clusters & Miscentering},
  author = {Jes Ford and Jake VanderPlas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.05700},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

11 pages, 3 figures. Feedback on this paper is welcome here: http://jesford.github.io/paper-on-cluster-lensing/. Software documentation, installation instructions, and source code are here: http://jesford.github.io/cluster-lensing/