AAS 204th Meeting, June 2004
Session 9 Clusters of Galaxies
Poster, Monday, May 31, 2004, 9:20am-6:30pm, Ballroom

[9.13] Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect Scaling Relations in Simulated Clusters of Galaxies

P. M. Motl, J. O. Burns (University of Colorado)

We investigate the form and evolution of scaling relations between cluster observables derived from the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect (SZE) and mass in simulated clusters of galaxies. We use a sophisticated, hybrid Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement / n-body code to simulate both the dark matter and baryonic fluid in the clusters; utilizing the piecewise parabolic scheme for the hydrodynamics. With up to seven levels of dynamic refinement in high density regions, we attain spatial resolution up to ~\; 16 kpc in the clusters and we assume a concordance \LambdaCDM cosmological model. We use four catalogs of clusters of galaxies where each catalog is assembled from simulations assuming different input physics including adiabatic physics only, radiative cooling only, star formation and finally star formation with feedback from supernovae. Each sample contains approximately 100 clusters at the present epoch in the mass range from 1 \times 1014 \; M\odot to 2 \times 1015 \; M\odot and approximately 10 clusters more massive than 1 \times 1014 \; M\odot at a redshift of 2. As the thermal SZE depends on the projection of the gas pressure through the cluster and the cluster medium is in approximate hydrostatic equilibrium with the dark matter potential, we expect that the integrated SZE is relatively insensitive to the detailed heating and cooling processes in the cores of clusters. We confirm this expectation by demonstrating that the derived scaling relations are nearly identical between the four cluster samples considered.