Weak lensing calibration of mass bias in the REFLEX+BCS X-ray galaxy cluster catalogue

Abstract

The use of large, X-ray selected galaxy cluster catalogues for cosmological analyses requires a thorough understanding of the X-ray mass estimates. Weak gravitational lensing is an ideal method to shed light on such issues, due to its insensitivity to the cluster dynamical state. We perform a weak lensing calibration of 166 galaxy clusters from the REFLEX and BCS cluster catalogue and compare our results to the X-ray masses based on scaled luminosities from that catalogue. To interpret the weak lensing signal in terms of cluster masses, we compare the lensing signal to simple theoretical Navarro-Frenk-White models and to simulated cluster lensing profiles, including complications such as cluster substructure, projected large-scale structure, and Eddington bias. We find evidence of underestimation in the X-ray masses, as expected, with $\langle M_{\mathrm{X}}/M_{\mathrm{WL}}\rangle = 0.75 \pm 0.07$ stat. $\pm 0.05$ sys. for our best-fit model. The biases in cosmological parameters in a typical cluster abundance measurement that ignores this mass bias will typically exceed the statistical errors.

13 pages, 5 figures. Revised to address referee comments