A Study of the Radial and Azimuthal Gas Distribution in Massive Galaxy Clusters

• Main Author: Nurgaliev, Daniyar Rashidovich
• Other Authors: Stubbs, Christopher William
• Language: en_US
• Published: Harvard University 2014
• Subjects: Astrophysics; asymmetry; density profile; galaxy cluster
• Online Access: http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11514; http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12274621

Clusters of galaxies are particularly interesting astrophysical systems, are the largest bound structures in the Universe, and contain fair sample of cosmic ingredients. Studies of cluster abundance as a function of mass and redshift were critical in establishing the standard model of cosmology. This dissertation presents results from X-ray imaging of massive distant (M > 10^14 M; 0:3 < z < 1.2) clusters, found via X-ray emission or Sunyaev-Zeldovich eff ect. This is the world's largest sample of massive galaxy clusters. We explore the radial and azimuthal profi les of the X-ray emitting gas and show that clusters are self-similar objects: their internal structure is largely independent of the cluster's mass or redshift, and the fractions of di fferent types of clusters does not change with redshift. We also present a new statistical technique for measuring a cluster's deviations from a perfect axisymmetric shape, which is especially useful in the case of low photon count observations of distant clusters. === Physics