The Heritage program for the ESA’s X-ray satellite XMM-Newton has been activated for the first time in the AO-17. It has registered a large response from the community, with an oversubscription factor of 10, and has assigned about 3 Msec of XMM exposure time to two only projects, one led by our group . The X-ray observations will start in Spring 2018 and will be executed in the next 3 years. Our project is focused on the ultimate products of structure formation in mass and time: a large, unbiased, signal-to-noise limited sample of 118 galaxy clusters detected by Planck via their Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect. Completing the high-fidelity XMM coverage of this sample has extraordinary legacy value. We will (i) obtain an accurate vision of the statistical properties of the local cluster population, and in the highest mass regime; (ii) uncover the provenance of non-gravitational heating; (iii) measure how their gas is shaped by the collapse into dark matter haloes and the mergers that built today’s clusters; (iv) resolve the major uncertainties in mass determinations that limit cosmological inferences; (v) build the foundation for cluster science with next-generation surveys.
With the preparation of Paper 1 (see below), we introduce the acronym for our project: CHEX-MATE, the Cluster HEritage project with XMM-Newton - Mass Assembly and Thermodynamics at the Endpoint of structure formation.
NEWS:
The sample includes 118 galaxy clusters selected to represent an unbiased census of
Tier-1: the population of clusters at the most recent time (z < 0.2);
Tier-2: the most massive objects to have formed thus far in the history of the Universe.
The selection is based on the following criteria applied to the Planck-SZ2 catalog:
Tier-1: SNR>6.5, z=[0.05, 0.2], DEC>0 ... 57 objects (43 to be observed)
Tier-2: SNR>6.5, z<0.6, M500>7.25e14 ... 57 objects (37 to be observed)
Tier-1 & Tier-2: 4 objects (0 to be observed)
With this unique sample, our goals are to:
SC members; Ahangar, Altria, Balboni, Bartalucci, Batalha, Bourdin, Campitiello, De Grandi, De Luca, Donahue, Dupourqué, Forman, Gaspari, Gastaldello, Ghirardini, Ghizzardi, Gitti, Jones, Le Brun, Mazzotta, Molendi, Oppizzi, Pointecouteau, Riva, Tozzi
Adam, Aussel, Bartalucci, Bourdin, Clerc, De Luca, De Petris, Gaspari, Kim, Macias Perez, Mayet, Mazzotta, Melin, Muñoz Echeverria, Oppizzi, Perotto; Saxena (PhD: ref. Sayers)
Ahangar, Gavidia, Giocoli, Ingoglia, Jauzac, Meneghetti, Okabe, Radovich, Sayers, Sereno
Biffi, Corasaniti, De Petris, Dolag, Ferragamo, Giocoli, Le Brun, Salvati, Saro, Seppi, Yepes
Adam, Balboni, Botteon, Forman, Gastaldello, Gitti, Ingoglia, Johnston-Hollitt
List of 122 targets (118 clusters, plus 4 offset exposures),
with priority for XMM observation (column "RPS"; 0 = data already available in the archive),
requested exposure time (column "t_RPS" in ksec), and XMM revolution during which has been observed (column "REV"):
