A phenomenological model for the intracluster medium that matches X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich observations

Abstract

Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters are still challenged to produce a model for the intracluster medium that matches all aspects of current X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich observations. To facilitate such comparisons with future simulations and to enable realistic cluster population studies for modelling e.g. non-thermal emission processes, we construct a phenomenological model for the intracluster medium that is based on a representative sample of observed X-ray clusters. We create a mock galaxy cluster catalogue based on the large collisionless N-body simulation MultiDark, by assigning our gas density model to each dark matter cluster halo. Our clusters are classified as cool core and non-cool core according to a dynamical disturbance parameter. We demonstrate that our gas model matches the various observed Sunyaev-Zel'dovich and X-ray scaling relations as well as the X-ray luminosity function, thus enabling to build a reliable mock catalogue for present surveys and forecasts for future experiments. In a companion paper, we apply our catalogues to calculate non-thermal radio and gamma-ray emission of galaxy clusters. We make our cosmologically complete multifrequency mock catalogues for the (non-)thermal cluster emission at different redshifts publicly and freely available online through the MultiDark data base. © 2013 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.