MASS SUBSTRUCTURE IN ABELL 3128

Abstract

We perform a detailed two-dimensional weak gravitational lensing analysis of the nearby (z = 0.058) galaxy cluster Abell 3128 using deep ugrz imaging from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam). We have designed a pipeline to remove instrumental artifacts from DECam images and stack multiple dithered observations without inducing a spurious ellipticity signal. We develop a new technique to characterize the spatial variation of the point-spread function that enables us to circularize the field to better than 0.5% and thereby extract the intrinsic galaxy ellipticities. By fitting photometric redshifts to sources in the observation, we are able to select a sample of background galaxies for weak-lensing analysis free from low-redshift contaminants. Photometric redshifts are also used to select a high-redshift galaxy subsample with which we successfully isolate the signal from an interloping z = 0.44 cluster. We estimate the total mass of Abell 3128 by fitting the tangential ellipticity of background galaxies with the weak-lensing shear profile of a Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) halo and also perform NFW fits to substructures detected in the 2D mass maps of the cluster. This study yields one of the highest resolution mass maps of a low-z cluster to date and is the first step in a larger effort to characterize the redshift evolution of mass substructures in clusters.