The Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey. I. Survey Overview and a Catalog of >2000 Galaxy Clusters at z ≃ 1

Abstract

We present the Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey (MaDCoWS), a search for galaxy clusters at 0.7 z 1.5 based upon data from the W ide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE ) mission. MaDCoWS is the first cluster survey capable of discovering massive clusters at these redshifts over the full extragalactic sky. The search is divided into two regions -the region of the extragalactic sky covered by Pan-STARRS (δ > −30 • ) and the remainder of the southern extragalactic sky at δ < −30 • for which shallower optical data from SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey are available. In this paper we describe the search algorithm, characterize the sample, and present the first MaDCoWS data release -catalogs of the 2433 highest amplitude detections in the WISE -Pan-STARRS region and the 250 highest amplitude detections in the WISE -SuperCOSMOS region. A total of 1723 of the detections from the WISE -Pan-STARRS sample have also been observed with the Spitzer S pace Telescope, providing photometric redshifts and richnesses, and an additional 64 detections within the WISE -SuperCOSMOS region also have photometric redshifts and richnesses. Spectroscopic redshifts for 38 MaDCoWS clusters with IRAC photometry demonstrate that the photometric redshifts have an uncertainty of σ z /(1 + z) 0.036. Combining the richness measurements with Sunyaev-Zel'dovich observations of MaDCoWS clusters, we also present a preliminary mass-richness relation that can be used to infer the approximate mass distribution of the full sample. The estimated median mass for the WISE -Pan-STARRS catalog is M 500 = 1.6 +0.7 −0.8 × 10 14 M , with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich data confirming that we detect clusters with masses up to M 500 ∼ 5 × 10 14 M (M 200 ∼ 10 15 M ).

The Massive and Distant Clusters of WISE Survey. VII. The Environments and Properties of Radio Galaxies in Clusters at z ∼ 1

“…Gonzalez et al (2019) report the 2681 highest amplitude detections. The cluster centers are defined by the catalog coordinates from the original WISE -PanSTARRS search as described in Gonzalez et al (2019) and have a positional uncertainty of 21 (see Gonzalez et al 2019 for a more detailed discussion). Mo et al (2018) find that 19% of MaDCoWS clusters within the FIRST footprint have at least one FIRST source coincident with the inner 1 region compared to the 5% found if the center is offset to a random position far from the cluster.…”

The SPTpol Extended Cluster Survey

“…As demonstrated in, e.g., Gonzalez et al (2019), observations from WISE (Wright et al 2010) are an excellent resource for identifying high-redshift clusters. Of particular relevance for this work are the observations in the [W1] and [W2] filter bands at 3.4 and 4.6 μm, which we use to confirm cluster candidates by identifying overdensities of high-redshift galaxies at a common 1.6 μm rest frame (see, e.g., Muzzin et al 2013).…”

“…Clusters of galaxies, as tracers of the extreme peaks in the matter density field, are valuable tools for constraining cosmological and astrophysical models (see, e.g., Voit 2005;Allen et al 2011;Kravtsov & Borgani 2012;Weinberg et al 2013, and references therein). Clusters imprint signals on the sky across the electromagnetic spectrum, which have led to three main ways of observationally detecting these systems: as overdensities of galaxies in optical and/or near-infrared (NIR) surveys (e.g., Abell 1958;Koester et al 2007;Eisenhardt et al 2008;Wen et al 2012;Rykoff et al 2014;Bleem et al 2015a;Oguri et al 2018;Wen et al 2018;Gonzalez et al 2019), as sources of extended extragalactic emission at X-ray wavelengths (e.g., Gioia et al 1990;Böhringer et al 2004;Ebeling et al 2010;Piffaretti et al 2011;Mehrtens et al 2012;Liu et al 2015b;Adami et al 2018;Klein et al 2019), and via their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) signature (Sunyaev & Zel'dovich 1972) in millimeter-wave surveys. The last two techniques rely on observables arising from the hot (10 7 -10 8 K) gas in the intracluster medium.…”

Extragalactic Astrophysics With Next-Generation CMB Experiments

“…Classical systematic cluster searches were carried out via X-ray [e.g., refs. 77, 78], Sunyaev-Zeldovich [SZ; 79,80,81,82] and optical/near-infrared [83,84,85,86] surveys. These surveys, however, have yielded only a handful of confirmed proto-cluster detections at z ∼ > 1.5 [76].…”