Related papers: Statistical uncertainties and systematic errors in…
Weak lensing measurements of cluster masses are necessary for calibrating mass-observable relations (MORs) to investigate the growth of structure and the properties of dark energy. However, the measured cluster shear signal varies at fixed…
Future high-resolution microwave background measurements hold the promise of detecting galaxy clusters throughout our Hubble volume through their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signature, down to a given limiting flux. The number density of galaxy…
Scaling properties of galaxy cluster observables with mass provide central insights into the processes shaping clusters. Calibrating proxies for cluster mass will be crucial to cluster cosmology with upcoming surveys like eROSITA and…
There are only two methods for estimating the mass distribution in the outer regions of galaxy clusters, where virial equilibrium does not hold: weak gravitational lensing and identification of caustics in redshift space. For the first…
In the era of large surveys, yielding thousands of galaxy clusters, efficient mass proxies at all scales are necessary in order to fully utilize clusters as cosmological probes. At the cores of strong lensing clusters, the Einstein radius…
Weak gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters on faint higher redshift galaxies has been traditionally used to study the cluster mass distribution and as a tool to identify clusters as peaks in the shear maps. However, it becomes soon clear…
The scaling between X-ray observables and mass for galaxy clusters and groups is instrumental for cluster based cosmology and an important probe for the thermodynamics of the intracluster gas. We calibrate a scaling relation between the…
Upcoming weak lensing surveys will survey large cosmological volumes to measure the growth of cosmological structure with time and thereby constrain dark energy. One major systematic uncertainty in this process is the calibration of the…
We estimate the amplitude of the source-lens clustering bias and of the intrinsic-alignment bias of weak lensing estimators of the two-point and three-point convergence and cosmic-shear correlation functions. We use a linear galaxy bias…
Galaxy group masses are important to relate these systems with the dark matter halo hosts. However, deriving accurate mass estimates is particularly challenging for low-mass galaxy groups. Moreover, calibration of bservational mass-proxies…
Hierarchical theories of structure formation predict that clusters of galaxies should be embedded in a web like structure, with filaments emanating from them to large distances. The amount of mass contained within such filaments near a…
Strong gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters is a fundamental tool to study dark matter and constrain the geometry of the Universe. Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields programme has allowed a significant improvement of…
Measurement of the gravitational distortion of images of distant galaxies is rapidly becoming established as a powerful probe of the dark mass distribution in clusters of galaxies. With the advent of large mosaics of CCD's these methods…
We explore a variety of statistics of clusters selected with cosmic shear measurement by utilizing both analytic models and large numerical simulations. We first develop a halo model to predict the abundance and the clustering of weak…
The Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS) is a 100 square degree galaxy cluster survey designed to provide a large sample of optically selected clusters of galaxies with redshifts 0.1<z<1.4. The survey data are also useful for a variety of…
We develop a new method of combining cluster observables (number counts and cluster-cluster correlation functions) and stacked weak lensing signals of background galaxy shapes, both of which are available in a wide-field optical imaging…
We study the impact of theoretical uncertainty in the dark matter halo mass function and halo bias on dark energy constraints from imminent galaxy cluster surveys. We find that for an optical cluster survey like the Dark Energy Survey, the…
Weak lensing is one of the best available diagnostic tools to measure the total density profiles of distant clusters of galaxies. Unfortunately, it suffers from the well-known mass-sheet degeneracy, so that weak lensing analyses cannot lead…
The present generation of weak lensing surveys will be superseded by surveys run from space with much better sky coverage and high level of signal to noise ratio, such as SNAP. However, removal of any systematics or noise will remain a…
We study a sample of ~10^4 galaxy clusters in the redshift range 0.2<z<0.8 with masses M_200 > 5x10^13 h_70^-1 M_sun, discovered in the second Red-sequence Cluster Survey (RCS2). The depth and excellent image quality of the RCS2 enable us…