Cluster cosmology without cluster finding

Abstract

Abstract We propose that observations of super-massive galaxies contain cosmological statistical constraining power similar to conventional cluster cosmology, and we provide promising indications that the associated systematic errors are comparably easier to control. We consider a fiducial spectroscopic and stellar mass complete sample of galaxies drawn from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Survey (DESI) and forecast how constraints on Ωm–σ8 from this sample will compare with those from number counts of clusters based on richness λ. At fixed number density, we find that massive galaxies offer similar constraints to galaxy clusters. However, a mass-complete galaxy sample from DESI has the potential to probe lower halo masses than standard optical cluster samples (which are typically limited to λ ≳ 20 and Mhalo ≳ 1013.5M⊙/h); additionally, it is straightforward to cleanly measure projected galaxy clustering wp for such a DESI sample, which we show can substantially improve the constraining power on Ωm. We also compare the constraining power of M*-limited samples to those from larger but mass-incomplete samples (e.g., the DESI Bright Galaxy Survey, BGS, Sample); relative to a lower number density M*-limited samples, we find that a BGS-like sample improves statistical constraints by 60 % for Ωm and 40 % for σ8, but this uses small scale information which will be harder to model for BGS. Our initial assessment of the systematics associated with super-massive galaxy cosmology yields promising results. The proposed samples have a ∼ 10 % satellite fraction, but we show that cosmological constraints may be robust to the impact of satellites. These findings motivate future work to realize the potential of super-massive galaxies to probe lower halo masses than richness-based clusters and to potentially avoid persistent systematics associated with optical cluster finding.