The extended ROSAT-ESO Flux Limited X-ray Galaxy Cluster Survey (REFLEX II) III. Construction of the first flux-limited supercluster sample

Abstract

We present the first supercluster catalogue constructed with the extended ROSAT-ESO Flux Limited X-ray Galaxy Cluster survey (REFLEX II) data, which comprises 919 X-ray selected galaxy clusters. Based on this cluster catalogue we construct a supercluster catalogue using a friends-of-friends algorithm with a linking length depending on the local cluster density. The resulting catalogue comprises 164 superclusters at redshift z<=0.4. We study the properties of different catalogues such as the distributions of the redshift, extent and multiplicity by varying the choice of parameters. In addition to the main catalogue we compile a large volume-limited cluster sample to investigate the statistics of the superclusters. We also compare the X-ray luminosity function for the clusters in superclusters with that for the field clusters with the flux- and volume-limited catalogues. The results mildly support the theoretical suggestion of a top-heavy X-ray luminosity function of galaxy clusters in regions of high cluster density.