Institution

Abstract:

This project seeks to develop a new method to constrain the mass distributions of galaxy clusters simultaneously using X-ray and gravitational lensing data. This combination will allow for modeling of fully 3D cluster structures with an accuracy never before achieved, shedding light on the distribution, and thus nature, of dark matter. The resulting models occupy highly degenerate and non-Gaussian regions in the 10-dimensional prior parameter space, making the use of computationally intensive Bayesian techniques such as Markov Chain Monte Carlo necessary. This new method must be tested on a large number of simulated clusters, including a range of analytic and N-body cluster models, in order to verify its reliability and statistical properties. Once this testing is complete, this method will be applied to a large number of existing cluster observations in order to achieve better constraints than ever before obtained on the shapes of dark matter structures, the mass-concentration relation predicted in the Cold Dark Matter paradigm, and on the cluster mass-observable relations that will be vital to performing precision cosmology with future astronomical surveys, including the EUCLID satellite project (for which the cluster group is headed by LMU's Prof. Dr. Jochen Weller).