An optical catalog of galaxy clusters obtained from an adaptive matched filter finder applied to SDSS DR9 data

Abstract

We present a new galaxy cluster catalog constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 9 (SDSS DR9) using an Adaptive Matched Filter (AMF) technique. Our catalog has 46,479 galaxy clusters with richness Λ200 > 20 in the redshift range 0.045 ≤ z < 0.641 in ∼11,500 deg2 of the sky. Angular position, richness, core and virial radii and redshift estimates for these clusters, as well as their error analysis, are provided as part of this catalog. In addition to the main version of the catalog, we also provide an extended version with a lower richness cut, containing 79,368 clusters. This version, in addition to the clusters in the main catalog, also contains those clusters (with richness 10 < Λ200 < 20) which have a one-to-one match in the DR8 catalog developed by Wen et al.(WHL). We obtain probabilities for cluster membership for each galaxy and implement several procedures for the identification and removal of false cluster detections.We cross-correlate the main AMF DR9 catalog with a number of cluster catalogs in different wavebands (Optical, X–ray). We compare our catalog with other SDSS-based ones such as the redMaPPer (26,350 clusters) and the Wen et al. (WHL) (132,684 clusters) in the same area of the sky and in the overlapping redshift range. We match 97% of the richest Abell clusters (Richness group 3), the same as WHL, while redMaPPer matches ∼ 90% of these clusters. Considering AMF DR9 richness bins, redMaPPer does not have one-to-one matches for 70% of our lowest richness clusters (20 < Λ200 < 40), while WHL matches 54% of these missed clusters (not present in redMaPPer). redMaPPer consistently does not possess one-to-one matches for ∼ 20% AMF DR9 clusters with Λ200 > 40, while WHL matches ≥ 70% of these missed clusters on average. For comparisons with X-ray clusters, we match the AMF catalog with BAX, MCXC and a combined catalog from NORAS and REFLEX. We consistently obtain a greater number of one-to-one matches for X–ray clusters across higher luminosity bins (Lx > 6 × 1044 ergs/sec) than redMaPPer while WHL matches the most clusters overall. For the most luminous clusters (Lx > 8), our catalog performs equivalently to WHL. This new catalog provides a wider sample than redMaPPer while retaining many fewer objects than WHL.