The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Physical Properties and Purity of a Galaxy Cluster Sample Selected via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect
Creators: name: Menanteau, Felipe
name: Gonzalez, Jorge
name: Juin, Jean-Baptiste
name: Marriage, Tobias A.
name: Reese, Erik
name: Acquaviva, Viviana
name: Aguirre, Paula
name: Appel, John William
name: Baker, Andrew J.
name: Barrientos, L. Felipe
name: Battistelli, Elia S.
name: Bond, J. Richard
name: Das, Sudeep
name: Devlin, Mark J.
name: Dicker, Simon
name: Deshpande, Amruta J.
name: Dunkley, Joanna
name: Dunner, Rolando
name: Essinger-Hileman, Thomas
name: Fowler, Joseph W.
name: Hajian, Amir
name: Halpern, Mark
name: Hasselfield, Matthew
name: Hernandez-Monteagudo, Carlos
name: Hilton, Matt
name: Hincks, Adam D.
name: Hlozek, Renee
name: Hughes, John P.
name: Huffenberger, Kevin M.
name: Infante, Leopoldo
name: Irwin, Kent D.
name: Klein, Jeff
name: Kosowsky, Arthur
name: Lin, Yen-Ting
name: Marsden, Danica
name: Moodley, Kavilan
name: Niemack, Michael D.
name: Nolta, Michael R.
name: Page, Lyman A.
name: Parker, Lucas
name: Partridge, Bruce
name: Sievers, Jon
name: Sehgal, Neelima
name: Spergel, David N.
name: Staggs, Suzanne T.
name: Swetz, Daniel
name: Switzer, Eric
name: Thornton, Robert
name: Trac, Hy
name: Warne, Ryan
name: Wollack, Ed
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2010
Subjects: subject: Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: We present optical and X-ray properties for the first confirmed galaxy cluster sample selected by the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect from 148 GHz maps over 455 square degrees of sky made with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. These maps, coupled with multi-band imaging on 4-meter-class optical telescopes, have yielded a sample of 23 galaxy clusters with redshifts between 0.118 and 1.066. Of these 23 clusters, 10 are newly discovered. The selection of this sample is approximately mass limited and essentially independent of redshift. We provide optical positions, images, redshifts and X-ray fluxes and luminosities for the full sample, and X-ray temperatures of an important subset. The mass limit of the full sample is around 8e14 Msun, with a number distribution that peaks around a redshift of 0.4. For the 10 highest significance SZE-selected cluster candidates, all of which are optically confirmed, the mass threshold is 1e15 Msun and the redshift range is 0.167 to 1.066. Archival observations from Chandra, XMM-Newton, and ROSAT provide X-ray luminosities and temperatures that are broadly consistent with this mass threshold. Our optical follow-up procedure also allowed us to assess the purity of the ACT cluster sample. Eighty (one hundred) percent of the 148 GHz candidates with signal-to-noise ratios greater than 5.1 (5.7) are confirmed as massive clusters. The reported sample represents one of the largest SZE-selected sample of massive clusters over all redshifts within a cosmologically-significant survey volume, which will enable cosmological studies as well as future studies on the evolution, morphology, and stellar populations in the most massive clusters in the Universe.
description: 20 pages, 15 figures, 6 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ. Higher resolution figures available at: http://peumo.rutgers.edu/~felipe/e-prints/