Constraining Cluster Virialization Mechanism and Cosmology Using Thermal-SZ-selected Clusters from Future CMB Surveys

We forecast the number of galaxy clusters that can be detected via the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) signals by future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, primarily the wide area survey of the CMB-S4 experiment but also CMB-S4's smaller de-lensing survey and the proposed CMB-HD experiment. We predict that CMB-S4 will detect 75,000 clusters with its wide survey of f (sky) = 50% and 14,000 clusters with its deep survey of f (sky) = 3%. Of these, approximately 1350 clusters will be at z >= 2, a regime that is difficult to probe by optical or X-ray surveys. We assume CMB-HD will survey the same sky as the S4-Wide, and find that CMB-HD will detect three times more overall and an order of magnitude more z >= 2 clusters than CMB-S4. These results include galactic and extragalactic foregrounds along with atmospheric and instrumental noise. Using CMB-cluster lensing to calibrate the cluster tSZ-mass scaling relation, we combine cluster counts with primary CMB to obtain cosmological constraints for a two-parameter extension of the standard model (?CDM + n-ary sumation m ( nu ) + w (0)). In addition to constraining sigma(w (0)) to less than or similar to 1%, we find that both surveys can enable a similar to 2.5-4.5 sigma detection of n-ary sumation m ( nu ), substantially strengthening CMB-only constraints. We also study the evolution of the intracluster medium by modeling the cluster virialization v(z) and find tight constraints from CMB-S4, with further factors of three to four improvement for CMB-HD.

Automated summary

This study forecasts the number of galaxy clusters detectable through thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich signals and explores the cosmological constraints and evolution of intracluster medium.