26 Mar 2003 - Comparing Simulated Compton y Maps and Catalogs

An essential input to SZ experimental simulations are simulated Compton y maps of the sky together with corresponding cluster catalogs. I currently have 3 nice sets of LCDM simulations:

• White, Hernquist, Springel, (WHS) 15 of 1 deg x 1 deg images from hydro sims.
• Schultz and White, (SW) 10 of 3 deg x 3 deg images from N-body sims.
• Gus Evard and John Bialek, (Bia) 100 of 1 deg x 1 deg images derived by stacking hi-res single cluster sims according to catalogs derived from Hubble volume simulations.

Here are a few plots comparing these three:

Comparing the catalogs: Note that WHS and Bia agree pretty well, whereas SW has approx twice as many clusters of given mass.

Comparing the y maps: The WHS maps have more small scale power.

Here are the first three actual maps with color scale truncated at y=3e-5. Click here for all of them.