English

Splashback radius and the mass accretion rate of RASS MCMF galaxy clusters

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-01-12 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We present measurements of the radial profile of mass and galaxy number density around X-ray selected ROSAT All Sky Survey-Multi-Component Matched Filter galaxy clusters using Year 3 data from the Dark Energy Survey. We measure the projected cross-correlation signal of the RedMaGiC "high density" galaxies around an approximately volume-limited sample of 255 galaxy clusters at a median redshift of z=0.4z=0.4 and an X-ray luminosity LX>1044ergss1h2L_X > 10^{44} \,\text{ergs} \, \text{s}^{-1} \, \text{h}^{-2}. This cross-correlation signal measured with a signal-to-noise ratio of 16.41 allows us to infer a 3D number density profile which shows a significant steepening at the edges of these galaxy clusters, namely the splashback radius of rspr_{sp} /h1M=2.190.43+0.50h^{-1} \mathrm{M_{\odot}} = 2.19^{+0.50}_{-0.43}. We present the dependence of the splashback radius value over a range of absolute galaxy magnitude cuts to look for any evidence of dynamical friction affecting these results. The weak lensing signal around our galaxy clusters measured with a signal-to-noise ratio of 32.19 allows us to infer a halo mass log(M200m/h1Mpc)=14.680.04+0.04\text{log} (M_{\rm 200m} / h^{-1} \text{Mpc}) = 14.68_{-0.04}^{+0.04}. Comparison of the location of the splashback radius with the spherical overdensity boundary r200mr_{\rm 200m} shows consistency with the ΛCDM\mathrm{\Lambda CDM} predictions. We present the first inference of the average mass accretion rate of galaxy clusters using our measurements of the splashback radius.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.08925,
  title  = {Splashback radius and the mass accretion rate of RASS MCMF galaxy clusters},
  author = {Jitendra Joshi and Divya Rana and Surhud More and Matthias Klein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08925},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

21 pages, 13 figures