Constraints on Nonthermal Pressure at Galaxy Cluster Outskirts from a Joint SPT and XMM-Newton Analysis

Abstract

We present joint South Pole Telescope and XMM-Newton observations of eight massive galaxy clusters (0.8–2 × 10 ^15 M _⊙ ) spanning a redshift range of 0.16–0.35. Employing a novel Sunyaev–Zel’dovich + X-ray fitting technique, we effectively constrain the thermodynamic properties of these clusters out to the virial radius. The resulting best-fit electron density, deprojected temperature, and deprojected pressure profiles are in good agreement with previous observations of massive clusters. For the majority of the cluster sample (five out of eight clusters), the entropy profiles exhibit a self-similar behavior near the virial radius. We further derive hydrostatic mass, gas mass, and gas fraction profiles for all clusters up to the virial radius. Comparing the enclosed gas fraction profiles with the universal gas fraction profile, we obtain nonthermal pressure fraction profiles for our cluster sample at >0.5 R _500 , demonstrating a steeper increase between R _500 and R _200 that is consistent with the hydrodynamical simulations. Our analysis yields nonthermal pressure fraction ranges of 8%–28% (median: 15% ± 11%) at R _500 and 21%–35% (median: 27% ± 12%) at R _200 . Notably, weak-lensing mass measurements are available for only four clusters in our sample, and our recovered total cluster masses, after accounting for nonthermal pressure, are consistent with these measurements.

Keywords

• Galaxy clusters