Golovich, Nathan and Dawson, William A. and Wittman, David M. and Weeren, Reinout J. van and Andrade-Santos, Felipe and Jee, M. James and Benson, Bryant and Gasperin, Francesco de and Venturi, Tiziana and Bonafede, Annalisa and Sobral, David and Ogrean, Georgiana A. and Lemaux, Brian C. and Bradač, Maruša and Brüggen, Marcus and Peter, Annika H. G. (2019) Merging Cluster Collaboration : A Panchromatic Atlas of Radio Relic Mergers. The Astrophysical Journal, 882 (1): 69. ISSN 0004-637X
Abstract
Golovich et al. 2017b presents an optical imaging and spectroscopic survey of 29 radio relic merging galaxy clusters. In this paper, we study this survey to identify substructure and quantify the dynamics of the mergers. Using a combined photometric and spectroscopic approach, we identify the minimum number of substructures in each system to describe the galaxy populations and estimate the line of sight velocity difference between likely merging subclusters. We find that the line-of-sight velocity components of the mergers are typically small compared with the maximum three dimensional relative velocity (usually $`gold sample that is prime for further observation, modeling, and simulation study. Additional papers will present weak lensing mass maps and dynamical modeling for each merging system, ultimately leading to new insight into a wide range of astrophysical phenomena at some of the largest scales in the universe.