Measuring the surface mass density ellipticity of redMaPPer galaxy clusters using weak lensing

ABSTRACT In this work, we study the shape of the projected surface mass density distribution of galaxy clusters using weak-lensing stacking techniques. In particular, we constrain the average aligned component of the projected ellipticity, ϵ, for a sample of redMaPPer clusters (0.1 ≤ z < 0.4). We consider six different proxies for the cluster orientation and measure ϵ for three ranges of projected distances from the cluster centres. The mass distribution in the inner region (up to 700 kpc) is better traced by the cluster galaxies with a higher membership probability, while the outer region (from 700 kpc up to 5 Mpc) is better traced by the inclusion of less probable galaxy cluster members. The fitted ellipticity in the inner region is ϵ = 0.21 ± 0.04, in agreement with previous estimates. We also study the relation between ϵ and the cluster mean redshift and richness. By splitting the sample in two redshift ranges according to the median redshift, we obtain larger ϵ values for clusters at higher redshifts, consistent with the expectation from simulations. In addition, we obtain higher ellipticity values in the outer region of clusters at low redshifts. We discuss several systematic effects that might affect the measured lensing ellipticities and their relation to the derived ellipticity of the mass distribution.