arXiv subjects

S. Andreon

Publications and source records attributed to S. Andreon.

At least 289 records · Page 16Linked to original sources

arXiv2014

Chemical Evolution on the Scale of Clusters of Galaxies: A Conundrum?

The metal content of clusters of galaxies and its relation to their stellar content is revisited making use of a cluster sample for which all four basic parameters are homogeneously measured within consistent radii, namely core-excised mass-weighted metallicity plus total, stellar and ICM masses. For clusters of total mass $M_{500} >$ $\sim 10^{14}$ $M_{\odot}$ nice agreement is found between their iron content and what expected from empirical supernova yields. For the same clusters, there also appears to be at least as much iron in the intracluster medium (ICM) as there is still locked into stars (i.e., the ICM/stars metal share is about unity). However, for more massive clusters the stellar mass fraction appears to drop substantially without being accompanied by a drop in the ICM metallicity, thus generating a major tension with the nucleosynthesis expectation and inflating the metal share to extremely high values (up to $\sim 6$). Various possible solutions of this conundrum are discussed, but are all considered either astrophysically implausible, or lacking an independent observational support. For this reason we still entertain the possibility that even some of the best cluster data may be faulty, though we are not able to identify any obvious bias. Finally, based on the stellar mass-metallicity relation for local galaxies we estimate the contribution of galaxies to the ICM enrichment as a function of their mass, concluding that even the most massive galaxies must have lost a major fraction of the metals they have produced.

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arXiv2014

The insignificant evolution of the richness-mass relation of galaxy clusters

We analysed the richness--mass scaling of 23 very massive clusters at $0.15<z<0.55$ with homogenously measured weak-lensing masses and richnesses within a fixed aperture of $0.5$ Mpc radius. We found that the richness--mass scaling is very tight (the scatter is $<0.09$ dex with 90 \% probability) and independent of cluster evolutionary status and morphology. This implies a close association between infall and evolution of dark matter and galaxies in the central region of clusters. We also found that the evolution of the richness-mass intercept is minor at most, and, given the minor mass evolution across the studied redshift range, the richness evolution of individual massive clusters also turns out to be very small. Finally, it was paramount to account for the cluster mass function and the selection function. Ignoring them would led to biases larger than the (otherwise quoted) errors. Our study benefits from: a) weak-lensing masses instead of proxy-based masses thereby removing the ambiguity between a real trend and one induced by an accounted evolution of the used mass proxy; b) the use of projected masses that simplify the statistical analysis thereby not requiring consideration of the unknown covariance induced by the cluster orientation/triaxiality; c) the use of aperture masses as they are free of the pseudo-evolution of mass definitions anchored to the evolving density of the Universe; d) a proper accounting of the sample selection function and of the Malmquist-like effect induced by the cluster mass function; e) cosmological simulations for the computation of the cluster mass function, its evolution, and the mass growth of each individual cluster.

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arXiv2014

JKCS041: a Coma cluster progenitor at z=1.803

Using deep two-color near-infrared HST imaging and unbiased grism spectroscopy we present a detailed study of the z=1.803 JKCS041 cluster. Uniquely, for a high redshift cluster, we confirm a mass of $\log M=14.2$ in solar units using four different techniques based on the X-ray temperature, the X-ray luminosity and the cluster richness. JKCS041 is thus a progenitor of a local system like the Coma cluster. Our rich dataset and the abundant population of 14 spectroscopically-confirmed red sequence galaxies allows us to explore the past star formation history of this system in unprecedented detail. Remarkably, we find a prominent red sequence down to stellar masses as low as $\log M=9.8$, corresponding to a mass range of 2 dex. These quiescent galaxies are concentrated around the cluster center with a core radius of 330 kpc. Blue members are few and avoid the cluster center. In JKCS041 quenching was therefore largely completed by a look-back time of 10 Gyr and we can constrain the epoch at which this occurred via spectroscopic age-dating of the individual galaxies. Most galaxies were quenched about 1.1 Gyr prior to the epoch of observation. The less massive quiescent galaxies are somewhat younger, corresponding to a decrease in age of 650 Myr per mass dex, but the scatter in age at fixed mass is only 380 Myr (at $\log M=11$). The size-mass relation of quiescent galaxies in JKCS041 is consistent with that observed for local clusters within our uncertainties. Comparing our data on JKCS041 with 41 clusters at lower redshift, we find that the form of the mass function of red sequence galaxies has hardly evolved in the past 10 Gyr, both in terms of its faint end slope and characteristic mass. Despite observing JKCS041 soon after its quenching and the three fold expected increase in mass in the next 10 Gyr, it is already remarkably similar to present-day clusters.

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arXiv2013

Observational evidence that massive cluster galaxies were forming stars at z~2.5 and did not grow in mass at later times

Using Spitzer 3.6 micron data we derived the luminosity function and the mass function of galaxies in five z>1.4 clusters selected to have a firm intracluster medium detection. The five clusters differ in richness (ISCSJ1438.1+3414 and XMMXCSJ2215.9-1738 are twice as rich as ISCSJ1432.4+3250, IDCSJ1426.5+3508, and JKCS041) and morphological appareance. At the median redshift z=1.5, from the 150 member galaxies of the five clusters, we derived a characteristic magnitude of 16.92+/-0.13 in the [3.6] band and a characteristic mass of lgM*=11.30+/-0.05 Msol. We find that the characteristic luminosity and mass does not evolve between z=1 and 1.4 1.8 as a possible epoch for the mass build up. However, the observed values of m^* at very high redshift are too bright for galaxies without any star formation immediately preceding the observed redshift and therefore imply a star formation episode not earlier than z_f=2.5. For the first time, mass/luminosity functions are able to robustly distinguish tiny differences between formation redshifts and to set {\it upper} limits to the epoch of the last star-formation episode.

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arXiv2012

A low-scatter survey-based mass proxy for clusters of galaxies

Estimates of cosmological parameters using galaxy clusters have the scatter in the observable at a given mass as a fundamental parameter. This work computes the amplitude of the scatter for a newly introduced mass proxy, the product of the cluster total luminosity times the mass-to-light ratio, usually referred as stellar mass. The analysis of 12 galaxy clusters with excellent total masses shows a tight correlation between the stellar mass, or stellar fraction, and total mass within r500 with negligible intrinsic scatter: the 90% upper limit is 0.06 dex, the posterior mean is 0.027 dex. This scatter is similar to the one of best-determined mass proxies, such as Yx, i.e. the product of X-ray temperature and gas mass. The size of the cluster sample used to determine the intrinsic scatter is small, as in previous works proposing low-scatter proxies because very accurate masses are needed to infer very small values of intrinsic scatter. Three-quarters of the studied clusters have lgM <~14 Msol, which is advantageous from a cosmological perspective because these clusters are far more abundant than more massive clusters. At the difference of other mass proxies such as Yx, stellar mass can be determined with survey data up to at least z=0.9 using upcoming optical near-infrared surveys, such as DES and Euclid, or even with currently available surveys, covering however smaller solid angles. On the other end, the uncertainty about the predicted mass of a single cluster is large, 0.21 to 0.32 dex, depending on cluster richness. This is largely because the proxy itself has ~0.10 dex errors for clusters of lgM<~ 14 Msol mass.

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arXiv2012

Measurement errors and scaling relations in astrophysics: a review

This review article considers some of the most common methods used in astronomy for regressing one quantity against another in order to estimate the model parameters or to predict an observationally expensive quantity using trends between object values. These methods have to tackle some of the awkward features prevalent in astronomical data, namely heteroscedastic (point-dependent) errors, intrinsic scatter, non-ignorable data collection and selection effects, data structure and non-uniform population (often called Malmquist bias), non-Gaussian data, outliers and mixtures of regressions. We outline how least square fits, weighted least squares methods, Maximum Likelihood, survival analysis, and Bayesian methods have been applied in the astrophysics literature when one or more of these features is present. In particular we concentrate on errors-in-variables regression and we advocate Bayesian techniques.

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arXiv2012

The VISTA Deep Extragalactic Observations (VIDEO) Survey

In this paper we describe the first data release of the the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) Deep Extragalactic Observations (VIDEO) survey. VIDEO is a ~12degree^2 survey in the near-infrared Z,Y,J,H and K_s bands, specifically designed to enable the evolution of galaxies and large structures to be traced as a function of both epoch and environment from the present day out to z=4, and active galactic nuclei (AGN) and the most massive galaxies up to and into the epoch of reionization. With its depth and area, VIDEO will be able to fully explore the period in the Universe where AGN and starburst activity were at their peak and the first galaxy clusters were beginning to virialize. VIDEO therefore offers a unique data set with which to investigate the interplay between AGN, starbursts and environment, and the role of feedback at a time when it was potentially most crucial. We provide data over the VIDEO-XMM3 tile, which also covers the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope Legacy Survey Deep-1 field (CFHTLS-D1). The released VIDEO data reach a 5-sigma AB-magnitude depth of Z=25.7, Y=24.5, J=24.4, H=24.1 and K_s=23.8 in 2 arcsec diameter apertures (the full depth of Y=24.6 will be reached within the full integration time in future releases). The data are compared to previous surveys over this field and we find good astrometric agreement with the Two-Micron All Sky Survey, and source counts in agreement with the recently released UltraVISTA survey data. The addition of the VIDEO data to the CFHTLS-D1 optical data increases the accuracy of photometric redshifts and significantly reduces the fraction of catastrophic outliers over the redshift range 0<z<1 from 5.8 to 3.1 per cent in the absence of an i-band luminosity prior. (Truncated Abstract)

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arXiv2012

Richness-mass relation self-calibration for galaxy clusters

This work attains a threefold objective: first, we derived the richness-mass scaling in the local Universe from data of 53 clusters with individual measurements of mass. We found a 0.46+-0.12 slope and a 0.25+-0.03 dex scatter measuring richness with a previously developed method. Second, we showed on a real sample of 250 0.06<z<0.9 clusters, most of which are at z<0.3, with spectroscopic redshift that the colour of the red sequence allows us to measure the clusters' redshift to better than Delta z=0.02. Third, we computed the predicted prior of the richness-mass scaling to forecast the capabilities of future wide-field-area surveys of galaxy clusters to constrain cosmological parameters. We computed the uncertainty and the covariance matrix of the (evolving) richness-mass scaling of a PanStarrs 1+Euclid-like survey accounting for a large suite of sources of errors. We find that the richness-mass scaling parameters, which are the input ingredients of cosmological forecasts using cluster counts, can be determined 10^5 times better than estimated in previous works that did not use weak-lensing mass estimates. The better knowledge of the scaling parameters likely has a strong impact on the relative importance of the different probes used to constrain cosmological parameters. Richness-mass scaling parameters were recovered, but only if the cluster mass function and the weak-lensing redshift-dependent selection function were accounted for in the fitting of the mass-richness scaling. This emphasizes the limitations of often adopted simplifying assumptions, such as having a mass-complete redshift-independent sample. The fitting code used for computing the predicted prior, including the treatment of the mass function and of the weak-lensing selection function, is provided in the appendix. [Abridged]

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arXiv2012

The enrichment history of the intracluster medium: a Bayesian approach

This work measures the evolution of the iron content in galaxy clusters by a rigorous analysis of the data of 130 clusters at 0.1<z<1.3. This task is made difficult by a) the low signal-to-noise ratio of abundance measurements and the upper limits, b) possible selection effects, c) boundaries in the parameter space, d) non-Gaussian errors, e) the intrinsic variety of the objects studied, and f) abundance systematics. We introduce a Bayesian model to address all these issues at the same time, thus allowing cross-talk (covariance). On simulated data, the Bayesian fit recovers the input enrichment history, unlike in standard analysis. After accounting for a possible dependence on X-ray temperature, for metal abundance systematics, and for the intrinsic variety of studied objects, we found that the present-day metal content is not reached either at high or at low redshifts, but gradually over time: iron abundance increases by a factor 1.5 in the 7 Gyr sampled by the data. Therefore, feedback in metal abundance does not end at high redshift. Evolution is established with a moderate amount of evidence, 19 to 1 odds against faster or slower metal enrichment histories. We quantify, for the first time, the intrinsic spread in metal abundance, 18+/-3 %, after correcting for the effect of evolution, X-ray temperature, and metal abundance systematics. Finally, we also present an analytic approximation of the X-ray temperature and metal abundance likelihood functions, which are useful for other regression fitting involving these parameters. The data for the 130 clusters and code used for the stochastic computation are provided with the paper.

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arXiv2012

Comment on "Bayesian astrostatistics: a backward look to the future" by Tom Loredo, arXiv:1208.3036

This short note points out two of the incongruences that I find in the Loredo (2012) comments on Andreon (2012), i.e. on my chapter written for the book "Astrostatistical Challenges for the New Astronomy". First, I find illogic the Loredo decision of putting my chapter among those presenting simple models, because one of the models illustrated in my chapter is qualified by him as "impressing for his complexity". Second, Loredo criticizes my chapter at one location confusing it with another paper by another author, because my chapter do not touch the subject mentioned by Loredo (2012) critics, the comparison between Bayesian and frequentist fitting models.

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arXiv2012

Galaxy mass, cluster-centric distance and secular evolution: their role in the evolution of galaxies in clusters in the last 10 Gyr

Galaxy mass and environment are known to play a key role in galaxy evolution: looking at galaxy colors at different redshifts, fixed galaxy mass and environment, offers a powerful diagnosis to disentangle the role of each. In this work, we study the simulateneous dependence of the fraction of blue galaxies fblue on secular evolution, environment and galaxy mass with a well-controlled cluster sample. We are thus able to study the evolution and respective role of the cessation of star formation history (SFH) in clusters due to galaxy mass ("mass quenching") or to environment ("environmental quenching"). We define an homogenous X-ray selected cluster sample (25 clusters with 0 < z < 1 and one cluster at z \sim 2.2), having similar masses and well-defined sizes. Using multicolor photometry and a large spectroscopic sample to calibrate photometric redshifts, we carefully estimate fblue for each cluster at different galaxy mass and cluster-centric distance bins. We then fit with a simple model the dependence of fblue on redshift (z), environment (r/r200) and galaxy mass (M). fblue increases with cluster-centric distance with a slope $1.2^{+0.4}_{-0.3}$, decreases with galaxy mass with a slope $-3.8^{+0.6}_{-0.5}$, and increases with redshift with a slope $3.2^{+0.7}_{-0.5}$. The data also require for the first time a differential evolution with galaxy mass of fblue with redshift, with lower mass galaxies evolving slower by a factor $-4.1^{+1.1}_{-0.9}$. Our study shows that the processes responsible for the cessation of star formation in clusters are effective at all epochs (z<2.2), and more effective in denser environments and for more massive galaxies. We found that the mass and environmental quenchings are separable, that environmental quenching does not change with epoch, and that mass quenching is a dynamical process, i.e. its evolutionary rate is mass-dependent. [Abridged]

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arXiv2011

Understanding better (some) astronomical data using Bayesian methods

Current analysis of astronomical data are confronted with the daunting task of modeling the awkward features of astronomical data, among which heteroscedastic (point-dependent) errors, intrinsic scatter, non-ignorable data collection (selection effects), data structure, non-uniform populations (often called Malmquist bias), non-Gaussian data, and upper/lower limits. This chapter shows, by examples, how modeling all these features using Bayesian methods. In short, one just need to formalize, using maths, the logical link between the involved quantities, how the data arise and what we already known on the quantities we want to study. The posterior probability distribution summarizes what we known on the studied quantities after the data, and we should not be afraid about their actual numerical computation, because it is left to (special) Monte Carlo programs such as JAGS. As examples, we show how to predict the mass of a new object disposing of a calibrating sample, how to constraint cosmological parameters from supernovae data and how to check if the fitted data are in tension with the adopted fitting model. Examples are given with their coding. These examples can be easily used as template for completely different analysis, on totally unrelated astronomical objects, requiring to model the same awkward data features.

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arXiv2011

Star formation and environment in clusters up to z~2.2

The dependence of galaxy star formation activity on environment - especially in clusters - at high redshift is still poorly understood, as illustrated by the still limited number of z>1.4 clusters on the one hand, and by the still debated star formation-density relation at high redshift on the other hand. The zphot~2.2 JKCS041 cluster allows to probe such environmental dependence of star formation activity at an unprecedented combination of redshifts and environments. Its study permits to enlarge the knowledge of high redshift clusters and to put strong leverage on observational constraints for galaxy evolution models. We analyze deep u\astg'r'i'z'JHKs images from the CFHTLS/WIRDS surveys, which cover JKCS041 cluster field. We first estimate photometric redshifts based on multi-wavelength photometry. We then lead a careful analysis to test the presence of a Butcher-Oemler effect. We work on galaxies within 2\timesr200 and with masses >1.34\times10^11 Msun, and use two comparison clusters at z=0 and z=1 of similar mass. We estimate the radial profiles of the fraction of blue galaxies, taking into account the star aging with decreasing redshift. After confirming the high redshift nature of JKCS041, we find no evidence for a Butcher-Oemler effect between z~2.2 and z~0 for galaxies more massive than 1.34\times10^11 Msun. In the cluster center, a change greater than \Deltafblue/\Deltaz=0.16 between z~0 and z~2.2 would be easily detected. We also find that JKCS041 shows a consistent and systematic increase of the fraction of star-forming galaxies with cluster-centric distance, hence with decreasing density, for both a M>1.34\times10^11 Msun selected sample and a lower mass sample. In particular, very few (less than 15%) star-forming galaxies are found within r200/2 among high mass (M>1.34\times10^11 Msun) galaxies. Our results show that the present-day star formation-density relation is already in place at z~2.2.

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arXiv2011

Do X-ray dark or underluminous galaxy clusters exist?

[Abridged] We study the X-ray properties of a color-selected sample of clusters at 0.1<z<0.3, to quantify the real aboundance of the population of X-ray dark or underluminous clusters and at the same time the spurious detection contamination level of color-selected cluster catalogs. A careful selection allowed us to have an X-ray-unbiased sample of 33 clusters to measure the Lx-richness relation. Swift 1.4 Ms X-ray observations show that at least 89% of the color-detected clusters are real objects with a potential well deep enough to heat and retain an intracluster medium. The percentage rises to 94 % when one includes the single spectroscopically confirmed color-selected cluster whose X-ray emission is not secured. Looking at our results from the opposite perspective, the percentage of X-ray dark clusters among color-selected clusters is very low: at most about 11 per cent (at 90 % confidence). Supplementing our data with those from literature, we conclude that X-ray- and color- cluster surveys sample the same population and consequently that in this regard we can safely use clusters selected with any of the two methods for cosmological purposes. This is an essential and promising piece of information for upcoming surveys in both the optical/IR (DES, EUCLID) and X-ray (eRosita). Richness correlates with X-ray luminosity with a large scatter, 0.51+/-0.08 (0.44+/-0.07) dex in lgLx at a given richness, when Lx is measured in a 500 (1070) kpc aperture. We release data and software to estimate the X-ray flux, or its upper limit, of a source with over-Poisson background fluctuations (found in this work to be ~20% on cluster angular scales) and to fit X-ray luminosity vs richness if there is an intrinsic scatter. These Bayesian applications rigorously account for boundaries (e.g. the X-ray luminosity and the richness cannot be negative).

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arXiv2011

The extreme synchronicity of stellar ages of red galaxies in the JKCS041 cluster at z=2.2

Above redshift z ~ 1.4, we known little or nothing about the stellar ages of red galaxies in clusters, yet at these high redshifts important changes are predicted by current renditions of galaxy formation models embedded in the standard hierarchical paradigm of structure formation. Red-sequence galaxies in the cluster JKCS041 at z=2.2 show a tight distribution in colour that indicates a star formation history that is highly synchronized across galaxies. Specifically, we measure a spread in stellar age of 160+/-30 Myr, in marked disagreement with the current understanding of how massive red galaxies form in clusters, i.e. if they are produced somewhat stochastically in merging episodes that sometimes involve gas, hence star formation. The existence of a tight distribution in colour when the universe was at one quarter of its current age implies that mechanisms that have not yet been implemented in current galaxy formation scenarios long ago began to shape the star formation history of red cluster galaxies.

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arXiv2010

Galaxies spatially coincident with the JKCS041 X-ray emission display a red sequence at z~2.2

New deep z'-J data readly show a narrow red sequence co-centered with, and similary concentrated to, the extended X-ray emission of the cluster of galaxies JKCS041. The JKCS041 red sequence is 0.32+/-0.06 mag redder in z'-J than the red sequence of the zspec=1.62 IRC0218A cluster, putting JKCS041 at z<<1.62. The colour difference of the two red sequences gives a red-sequence based redshift of z=2.20+/-0.11 for JKCS041, where the uncertainty accounts for uncertainties in stellar synthesis population models, in photometric calibration and in the red sequence colour of both JKCS041 and IRC0218A clusters.

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arXiv2010

Cluster X-ray luminosity-temperature relation at z>~1.5

The evolution of the properties of the hot gas that fills the potential well of galaxy clusters is poorly known, since models are unable to give robust predictions and observations lack a sufficient redshift leverage and are affected by selection effects. Here, with just two high redshift, z approx 1.8, clusters avoiding selection biases, we obtain a significant extension of the redshift range and we begin to constrain the possible evolution of the X-ray luminosity vs temperature relation. The two clusters, JKC041 at z=2.2 and ISCSJ1438+3414 at z=1.41, are respectively the most distant cluster overall, and the second most distant that can be used for studying scaling relations. Their location in the X-ray luminosity vs temperature plane, with an X-ray luminosity 5 times lower than expected, suggests at the 95 % confidence that the evolution of the intracluster medium has not been self-similar in the last three quarters of the Universe age. Our conclusion is reinforced by data on a third, X-ray selected, high redshift cluster, too faint for its temperature when compared to a sample of similarly selected objects. Our data suggest that non-gravitational effects, such as the baryon physics, influence the evolution of galaxy cluster. Precise knowledge of evolution is central for using galaxy clusters as cosmological probes in planned X-ray surveys such as WFXT or JDEM.

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arXiv2010

Red sequence determination of the redshift of the cluster of galaxies JKCS041: z~2.2

This paper aims at robustly determining the redshift of the cluster of galaxies JKCS041 and at putting constraints on the formation epoch of the color-magnitude sequence in two very high redshift clusters. New deep z'-J data show a clear narrow red sequence that is co-centered with, and similarly concentrated on, the extended X-ray emission of the cluster of galaxies JKCS041. The JKCS041 red sequence is 0.32+/-0.06 mag redder in z'-J than the red sequence of the zspec=1.62 IRC0218A cluster, putting JKCS041 at z>>1.62 and ruling out z<~1.49 the latter claimed by a recent paper. The color difference of the two red sequences gives a red-sequence-based redshift of z=2.20+/-0.11 for JKCS041, where the uncertainty accounts for uncertainties in stellar synthesis population models, in photometric calibration, and in the red sequence color of both JKCS041 and IRC0218A clusters. We do not observe any sign of truncation of the red sequence for both clusters down to J=23 mag (1.0e+11 solar masses), which suggests that it is already in place in clusters rich and massive enough to heat and retain hot gas at these high redshifts.

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