Omega-Matter from the Temperature-Redshift Distribution of EMSS Clusters of Galaxies

Abstract

We constrain Omega_m through a maximum likelihood analysis of temperatures and redshifts of the high-redshift clusters from the EMSS. We simultaneously fit the low-redshift Markevitch (1998) sample (an all-sky sample from ROSAT with z=0.04- 0.09), a moderate redshift EMSS sample from Henry (1997) (9 clusters with z=0.3- 0.4), and a more distant EMSS sample (5 clusters with z=0.5-0.83 from Donahue et al. 1999) finding best-fit values of Omega_m = 0.45+/-0.1 for an open universe and Omega_m=0.27+/-0.1 for a flat universe. We analyze the effects of our governing assumptions, including the evolution and dispersion of the cluster L-T relation, the evolution and dispersion of the cluster M-T relation, the choice of low-redshift cluster sample, and the accuracy of the standard Press-Schechter formalism. We examine whether the existence of the massive distant cluster MS1054-0321 skews our results and find its effect to be small. From our maximum likelihood analysis we conclude that our results are not very sensitive to our assumptions, and bootstrap analysis shows that our results are not sensitive to the current temperature measurement uncertainties. The systematic uncertainties are ~+/- 0.1, and Omega_m=1 universes are ruled out at greater than 99.7% (3 sigma confidence.