X-ray properties of the X-CLASS-redMaPPer galaxy cluster sample: The luminosity-temperature relation

Abstract

This article presents the results of a spectroscopic analysis of the X-CLASS-redMaPPer (XC1-RM) galaxy cluster sample. X-CLASS is a serendipitous search for clusters in X-ray wavebands based on the XMM-Newton archive, whereas redMaPPer is an optical cluster catalogue derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The present sample comprises 92 X-ray extended sources identified in optical images within 1 arcmin separation. The area covered by the cluster sample is ∼ 27 deg2. The clusters span a wide redshift range (0.05 < z < 0.6) and 88 clusters benefit from spectrosopically confirmed redshifts using data from SDSS Data Release 14. We present an automated pipeline to derive the X-ray properties of the clusters in three distinct apertures: R500 (at fixed mass overdensity), Rfit (at fixed signal-to-noise ratio) and R300 kpc (fixed physical radius). The sample extends over wide temperature and luminosity ranges: from 1-10 keV and from 6 × 1042 to 11 × 1044 erg s−1, respectively. We investigate the luminosity-temperature (L-T) relation of the XC1-RM sample and find a slope equal to 3.03 ± 0.26. It is steeper than predicted by self-similar assumptions, in agreement with independent studies. A simplified approach is developed to estimate the amount and impact of selection biases that might be affecting our recovered L-T parameters. The result of this simulation process suggests that the measured L-T relation is biased to a steeper slope and higher normalization.