Galaxy Cluster Contribution to the Diffuse Extragalactic Ultraviolet Background

Abstract

The diffuse ultraviolet background radiation has been mapped over most of the sky with 2′ resolution using data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer survey. We utilize this map to study the correlation between the UV background and clusters of galaxies discovered via the Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect in the Planck survey. We use only high Galactic latitude ( ) galaxy clusters to avoid contamination by Galactic foregrounds, and we only analyze clusters with a measured redshift. This leaves us with a sample of 142 clusters over the redshift range of 0.02 ≤  z  ≤ 0.72, which we further subdivide into four redshift bins. In analyzing our stacked samples binned by redshift, we find evidence for a central excess of UV background light compared to local backgrounds for clusters with z  < 0.3. We then stacked these z  < 0.3 clusters to find a statistically significant excess of 12 ± 2.3 photon cm −2 s −1 sr −1 Å −1  over the median of ∼380 photon cm −2 s −1  sr −1 Å −1  measured around random blank fields. We measure the stacked radial profile of these clusters, and find that the excess UV radiation decays to the level of the background at a radius of ∼1 Mpc, roughly consistent with the maximum radial extent of the clusters. Analysis of possible physical processes contributing to the excess UV brightness indicates that non-thermal emission from relativistic electrons in the intracluster medium and faint, unresolved UV emission from cluster member galaxies and intracluster light are likely the dominant contributors.