The Effects of Halo Assembly Bias on Self-Calibration in Galaxy Cluster Surveys

Understand

Self-calibration techniques for analyzing galaxy cluster counts utilize the abundance and the clustering amplitude of dark matter halos.

• These properties simultaneously constrain cosmological parameters and the cluster observable-mass relation.
• It was recently discovered that the clustering amplitude of halos depends not only on the halo mass, but also on various secondary variables, such as the halo formation time and the concentration; these dependences are collectively termed assembly bias.
• Applying modified Fisher matrix formalism, we explore whether these secondary variables have a significant impact on the study of dark energy properties using the self-calibration technique in current (SDSS) and the near future (DES, SPT, and LSST) cluster surveys.