A comparison of weak-lensing masses and X-ray properties of galaxy clusters

Abstract

We present measurements of the masses of 20 X-ray luminous clusters of galaxies at intermediate redshifts, determined from a weak-lensing analysis of deep archival R-band data obtained using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Compared to previous work, our analysis accounts for a number of effects that are typically ignored, but can lead to small biases, or incorrect error estimates. We derive masses that are essentially model-independent and find that they agree well with measurements of the velocity dispersion of cluster galaxies and with the results of X-ray studies. Assuming a power law between the lensing mass and the X-ray temperature, M2500 ∝ Tα, we find a best-fitting slope of α = 1.34+0.30-0.28. This slope agrees with self-similar cluster models and studies based on X-ray data alone. For a cluster with a temperature of kT = 5 keV we obtain a mass M2500 = (1.4 ± 0.2) × 1014 h-1 M⊙ in fair agreement with recent Chandra and XMM studies. © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 RAS.