Improving galaxy cluster selection with the outskirt stellar mass of galaxies

Kwiecien, Matthew and Jeltema, Tesla and Leauthaud, Alexie and Huang, Song and Rykoff, Eli and Heydenreich, Sven and Lange, Johannes and Everett, Spencer and Zhou, Conghao and Kelly, Paige and Zhang, Yuanyuan and Shin, Tae-Hyeon and Golden-Marx, Jesse and Marshall, J. L. and Aguena, M. and Allam, S. S. and Bocquet, S. and Brooks, D. and Rosell, A. Carnero and Carretero, J. and da Costa, L. N. and Pereira, M. E. S. and Davis, T. M. and De Vicente, J. and Doel, P. and Ferrero, I. and Flaugher, B. and Frieman, J. and García-Bellido, J. and Gatti, M. and Gaztanaga, E. and Giannini, G. and Gruen, D. and Gruendl, R. A. and Gutierrez, G. and Hinton, S. R. and Hollowood, D. L. and Honscheid, K. and James, D. J. and Lee, S. and Miquel, R. and Pieres, A. and Malagón, A. A. Plazas and Romer, A. K. and Samuroff, S. and Sanchez, E. and Santiago, B. and Sevilla-Noarbe, I. and Smith, M. and Suchyta, E. and Swanson, M. E. C. and Tarle, G. and Tucker, D. L. and Vikram, V. and Weaverdyck, N. and Wiseman, P. (2025) Improving galaxy cluster selection with the outskirt stellar mass of galaxies. Physical Review D, 111 (12): 123524. ISSN 2470-0010

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Abstract

The number density and redshift evolution of optically selected galaxy clusters offer an independent measurement of the amplitude of matter fluctuations, 8. However, recent results have shown that clusters chosen by the redMaPPer algorithm show richness-dependent biases that affect the weak lensing signals and number densities of clusters, increasing uncertainty in the cluster mass calibration and reducing their constraining power. In this work, we evaluate an alternative cluster proxy, outskirt stellar mass, out, defined as the total stellar mass within a [50, 100] kpc envelope centered on a massive galaxy. This proxy exhibits scatter comparable to redMaPPer richness, , but is less likely to be subject to projection effects. We compare the Dark Energy Survey Year 3 redMaPPer cluster catalog with a out selected cluster sample from the Hyper-Suprime Camera survey. We use weak lensing measurements to quantify and compare the scatter of out and with halo mass. Our results show out has a scatter consistent with , with a similar halo mass dependence, and that both proxies contain unique information about the underlying halo mass. We find -selected samples introduce features into the measured Δ⁢Σ signal that are not well fit by a log-normal scatter only model, absent in out selected samples. Our findings suggest that out offers an alternative for cluster selection with more easily calibrated selection biases, at least at the generally lower richnesses probed here. Combining both proxies may yield a mass proxy with a lower scatter and more tractable selection biases, enabling the use of lower mass clusters in cosmology. Finally, we find the scatter and slope in the −out scaling relation to be 0.49 ±0.02 and 0.38 ±0.09.