Souza dos Santos, Giulya
Brazil University of São Paulo
Searching for Merging Galaxy Clusters with SPLUS
Galaxy clusters in merger release an enormous amount of gravitational energy, second only to the Big Bang itself. Studying these systems is crucial for understanding the behavior of the three main components of clusters: intra-cluster gas, dark matter, and galaxies. This work aims to identify and characterize such merging systems through an optical counterpart using data from the S-PLUS surveys.
We selected the primary candidates for merging systems based on the richness ratio of the primary and secondary groups, λ_(1,2) = λsec/λprim, where λ represents the sum of the probability of each galaxy belonging to a given group. The hypothesis of this study is that systems detected as a single cluster, but are actually pairs of nearby clusters possibly in a merging state, exhibit bimodal distributions of galaxies and mass. Thus, we performed characterizations regarding the unimodality of the galaxy and mass distributions for these systems, to understand if the parameter λ_(1,2) serves as a good statistic for detecting nearby cluster pairs.
Future prospects involve completing this study through the stacking technique of systems, performed in redshift and $\lambda_{1,2}$ intervals, enabling the production of 2D maps of projected galaxy density. Additionally, we plan to conduct further analyses of these systems using weak gravitational lensing, fitting the shear profile produced by these systems with the NFW profile.