Thursday, October 18, 2012

A Consistent Approach to Falsifying Lambda-CDM with Rare Galaxy Clusters. (arXiv:1210.4369v1 [astro-ph.CO])

A Consistent Approach to Falsifying Lambda-CDM with Rare Galaxy Clusters. (arXiv:1210.4369v1 [astro-ph.CO]):
We consider methods with which to answer the question "is any observed galaxy
cluster too unusual for Lambda-CDM?" After emphasising that many previous
attempts to answer this question have fallen foul of a statistical bias which
causes them to overestimate the confidence levels to which Lambda-CDM can be
ruled out, we outline a consistent approach to these rare clusters which allows
the question to be answered. We explicitly separate the two procedures of first
ranking clusters according to which appears 'most unusual' and secondly
calculating the probability that such an unusual observation was made in a
given cosmology. For the ranking procedure we define three properties of
individual galaxy clusters, each of which are sensitive to changes in cluster
populations arising from different modifications to the cosmological model. We
use these properties to define the "equivalent mass at redshift zero" for a
cluster - the mass of an equally unusual cluster today. This quantity is
independent of the observational survey in which the cluster was found, which
makes it an ideal proxy for ranking the relative unusualness of clusters
detected by different surveys. We then calculate the probability that any
cluster could have been observed with this equivalent mass at redshift zero,
avoiding the a posteriori bias present in many earlier analyses. These two
steps are performed for a systematic and comprehensive sample of observed
galaxy clusters and we confirm that none are more than 1-sigma deviations from
the Lambda-CDM expectation. Whereas we have only applied our method to galaxy
clusters, it is applicable to any isolated, collapsed, halo. As motivation for
future surveys, we also calculate where in the mass redshift plane the rarest
halo is most likely to be found, giving information as to which objects might
be the most fruitful in the search for new physics.

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