Eur. Phys. J. C (2012) 72: 2218
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-012-2218-4

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Galaxy cluster number count data constraints on cosmological parameters

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Bari, 70126, Bari, Italy
² INFN-Sezione di Bari, 70126, Bari, Italy
³ McWilliams Center for Cosmology and Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA
⁴ Department of Physics, Laurentian University, Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, ON, P3E 2C, Canada
⁵ Abastumani Astrophysical Observatory, Ilia State University, 2A Kazbegi Ave, Tbilisi, 0160, Georgia
⁶ Department of Physics, Kansas State University, 116 Cardwell Hall, Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA

^* e-mail: leonardo.campanelli@ba.infn.it

Received: 28 August 2012
Revised: 16 October 2012
Published online: 10 November 2012

Abstract

We use data on massive galaxy clusters (M _cluster>8×10¹⁴ h ⁻¹ M _⊙ within a comoving radius of R _cluster=1.5h ⁻¹ Mpc) in the redshift range 0.05≲z≲0.83 to place constraints, simultaneously, on the nonrelativistic matter density parameter Ω _m , on the amplitude of mass fluctuations σ ₈, on the index n of the power-law spectrum of the density perturbations, and on the Hubble constant H ₀, as well as on the equation-of-state parameters (w ₀,w _a ) of a smooth dark energy component.

For the first time, we properly take into account the dependence on redshift and cosmology of the quantities related to cluster physics: the critical density contrast, the growth factor, the mass conversion factor, the virial overdensity, the virial radius and, most importantly, the cluster number count derived from the observational temperature data.

We show that, contrary to previous analyses, cluster data alone prefer low values of the amplitude of mass fluctuations, σ ₈≤0.69 (1σ C.L.), and large amounts of nonrelativistic matter, Ω _m ≥0.38 (1σ C.L.), in slight tension with the ΛCDM concordance cosmological model, though the results are compatible with ΛCDM at 2σ. In addition, we derive a σ ₈ normalization relation, (2σ C.L.).

Combining cluster data with σ ₈-independent baryon acoustic oscillation observations, cosmic microwave background data, Hubble constant measurements, Hubble parameter determination from passively evolving red galaxies, and magnitude–redshift data of type Ia supernovae, we find and , the former in agreement and the latter being slightly lower than the corresponding values in the concordance cosmological model. We also find , the fit to the data being almost independent on n in the adopted range [0.90,1.05].

Concerning the dark energy equation-of-state parameters, we show that the present data on massive clusters weakly constrain (w ₀,w _a ) around the values corresponding to a cosmological constant, i.e. (w ₀,w _a )=(−1,0). The global analysis gives and (1σ C.L. errors). Very similar results are found in the case of time-evolving dark energy with a constant equation-of-state parameter w=const (the XCDM parametrization). Finally, we show that the impact of bounds on (w ₀,w _a ) is to favor top-down phantom models of evolving dark energy.