Related papers: New Mass Estimators for Tracer Populations
Mass estimators are a key tool to infer the dark matter content in pressure-supported systems like dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). We construct an estimator for enclosed masses based on the virial theorem which is insensitive to…
Nearby masses can have a high probability of lensing stars in a distant background field. High-probability lensing, or mesolensing, can therefore be used to dramatically increase our knowledge of dark and dim objects in the solar…
All galaxies are thought to reside within large halos of dark matter, whose properties can only be determined from indirect observations. The formation and assembly of galaxies is determined from the interplay between these dark matter…
We present a statistical comparison of three different estimates of cluster mass, namely, the dynamical masses obtained from the velocity dispersion of optical galaxies, the X-ray masses measured from the temperature of X-ray emitting gas…
Dynamical models allow us to connect the motion of a set of tracers to the underlying gravitational potential, and thus to the total (luminous and dark) matter distribution. They are particularly useful for understanding the mass and…
Traditional estimators of the mass of galaxy clusters assume that the cluster components (galaxies, intracluster medium, and dark matter) are in dynamical equilibrium. Two additional estimators, that do not require this assumption, were…
This paper examines several methods of tracing galaxies in N-body simulations and their effects on the derived galaxy statistics, especially measurements of velocity bias. Using two simulations with identical initial conditions, one…
We present a new non-parametric method for determining mean 3D density and mass profiles from weak lensing measurements around stacked samples of galaxies or clusters, that is, from measurement of the galaxy-shear or cluster-shear…
Despite consistent progress in numerical simulations, the observable properties of galaxy clusters are difficult to predict ab initio. It is therefore important to compare both theoretical and observational results to a direct measure of…
By using deep observations of clusters of galaxies, it has been recently found that the projected stellar mass density closely follows the projected total (dark and baryonic) mass density within the innermost ~140 kpc. In this work, we aim…
This paper is the first in a series in which we perform an extensive comparison of various galaxy-based cluster mass estimation techniques that utilise the positions, velocities and colours of galaxies. Our primary aim is to test the…
The on-going X-ray all-sky survey with the eROSITA instrument will yield large galaxy cluster samples, which will bring strong constraints on cosmological parameters. In particular, the survey holds great promise to investigate the tension…
By virtue of their high galaxy space densities and their large spatial separations, clusters are efficient and accurate tracers of the large-scale density and velocity fields. Substantial progress has been made over the past decade in the…
Forthcoming large-scale spectroscopic surveys will soon provide data on thousands of galaxy clusters. It is important that the systematics of the various mass estimation techniques are well understood and calibrated. We compare three…
We study the uncertainty in galaxy cluster mass estimates derived from X-ray data assuming hydrostatic equilibrium (HE) for the intra cluster gas. Using a Monte-Carlo procedure we generate a general class of mass models allowing very…
Velocity dispersions have been employed as a method to measure masses of clusters. To complement this conventional method, we explore the possibility of constraining cluster masses from the stacked phase space distribution of galaxies at…
The distortion of images of faint background galaxies by (weak) gravitational lensing can be used to measure the mass distribution of the deflector. The image distortions can be used to define a weighted mean of the mass inside a circular…
We compare the performance of mass estimators for elliptical galaxies that rely on the directly observable surface brightness and velocity dispersion profiles, without invoking computationally expensive detailed modeling. These methods…
The projected (PME) and virial mass estimator (VME) are revisited and tested using an N-body equilibrium system. It is found that the PME can overestimate the mass by approx 40% if a cluster is sampled only about its effective radius, Re.…
We explore an alternative method to the usual shear correlation function approach for the estimation of aperture mass statistics in weak lensing survey data. Our approach builds on the direct estimator method. In this paper, we extend our…