Paper detail

Mass modeling of galaxy clusters: quantifying hydrostatic bias and contribution from non-thermal pressure

Galaxy cluster mass determinations achieved using X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich data combined with the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium are generally biased. The bias exists for two main reasons: non-thermal pressure forces are expected to contribute to the overall pressure balance and deviations from spherical symmetry and hydrostatic equilibrium can be present. In this paper, we use a sample of zoom-in hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy clusters to measure the magnitude of hydrostatic bias and the non-thermal contribution to the total pressure. We propose a new empirical model for non-thermal pressure based on our simulations that can be applied to observations. We show that our model can be successfully applied to remove most of the bias related to neglection of non-thermal pressure, which is usually not included in hydrostatic cluster mass profile reconstructions. The use of this model may significantly improve the calibration of cluster scaling relations that are a key tool for cluster cosmology.