Evidence for Non-Linear Growth of Structure from an X-ray Selected Cluster Survey using a Novel Joint Analysis of the Chandra and XMM-Newton Archives

Abstract

We present a large X-ray selected serendipitous cluster survey based on a novel joint analysis of archival Chandra and XMM-Newton data. The survey provides enough depth to reach clusters of flux of $\approx 10^{-14} {ergs} {cm}^{-2} {s}^{-1}$ near $z$ $\approx$ 1 and simultaneously a large enough sample to find evidence for the strong evolution of clusters expected from structure formation theory. We detected a total of 723 clusters of which 462 are newly discovered clusters with greater than 6$\sigma$ significance. In addition, we also detect and measure 261 previously-known clusters and groups that can be used to calibrate the survey. The survey exploits a technique which combines the exquisite Chandra imaging quality with the high throughput of the XMM-Newton telescopes using overlapping survey regions. A large fraction of the contamination from AGN point sources is mitigated by using this technique. This results in a higher sensitivity for finding clusters of galaxies with relatively few photons and a large part of our survey has a flux sensitivity between $10^{-14}$ and $10^{-15} {ergs} {cm}^{-2} {s}^{-1}$. The survey covers 41.2 square degrees of overlapping Chandra and XMM-Newton fields and 122.2 square degrees of non-overlapping Chandra data. We measure the log N-log S distribution and fit it with a redshift-dependent model characterized by a luminosity distribution proportional to $e^{-\frac{z}{z_0}}$. We find that $z_0$ to be in the range 0.7 to 1.3, indicative of rapid cluster evolution, as expected for cosmic structure formation using parameters appropriate to the concordance cosmological model.