The Dark Matter, Gas and Galaxy Distributions in Abell 2218: A Weak Gravitational Lensing and X-ray Analysis

Abstract

We report on the detection of dark matter in the cluster Abell 2218 using the weak gravitational distortion of background galaxies. We find a highly significant, coherent detection of the distortion in the images of the background galaxies. The inferred 2D mass distribution has a peak that is coincident with the optical and X-ray centroid. The qualitative distributions of the cluster light, the X-ray emission and the dark matter are similar and the projected total mass, gas, and light surface densities are consistent with a $r^{-1}$ profile at distance of $r > 180^{\prime\prime}$ from the cluster cD galaxy. Using the weak lensing technique, we determine a lower bound for the total mass in A2218 of $(3.9 \pm 0.7) \times 10^{14}$~h$^{-1}$~M$_\odot$ within a fiducial aperture of radius 0.4~h$^{-1}$Mpc. The associated cluster mass-to-light ratio is $(440 \pm 80)$~h~$M_\odot/L_{\odot B}$. The mass estimated by the weak lensing method is consistent with that inferred from the X-ray data under the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium and we derive an upper bound for the gas-to-total mass ratio at 400~h$^{-1}$kpc of $M_{gas}/M_{tot} = (0.04 \pm 0.02)$h$^{-3/2}$.