Karl Andersson

Title: Characterizing the X-ray Properties of Clusters of Galaxies

Abstract: Clusters of galaxies are the most massive bound structures and represent a fair sample of the baryonic and dark matter content of the universe. The hot baryonic gas present in cluster dark matter halos cause them to emit in the X-ray band. Detailed mapping of cluster properties can be obtained from spatially resolved X-ray spectra from satellites XMM-Newton and Chandra. This work represents an attempt to model these data in the most efficient way, taking into account the associated imperfections of current X-ray mirrors and detectors. The method of Smoothed Particle Inference (SPI) is developed and applied to a large sample of clusters observed with XMM-Newton. The output of this modeling is used to categorize the clusters, quantify substructure and measure the luminosity-temperature relation separately for multiple subsamples. The goal is to establish the potential robustness of determination of mass from the X-ray data for a given cluster, which in turn is essential towards the use of clusters for measurements of cosmological parameters.