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Description
This table contains a catalog of galaxy clusters selected via their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect signature from 2500 deg<sup>2</sup> of South Pole Telescope (SPT) data. This work represents the complete sample of clusters detected at high significance in the 2500 deg<sup>2</sup> SPT-SZ survey, which was completed in 2011. A total of 677 (409) cluster candidates are identified above a signal-to-noise threshold xi of 4.5 (5.0). Ground- and space-based optical and near-infrared (NIR) imaging confirms overdensities of similarly colored galaxies in the direction of 516 (or 76%) of the xi > 4.5 candidates and 387 (or 95%) of the xi > 5 candidates; the measured purity is consistent with expectations from simulations. Of these confirmed clusters, 415 were first identified in SPT data, including 251 new discoveries reported in this work. The authors estimate photometric redshifts for all candidates with identified optical and/or NIR counterparts; they additionally report redshifts derived from spectroscopic observations for 141 of these systems. The mass threshold of the catalog is roughly independent of redshift above z ~ 0.25 leading to a sample of massive clusters that extends to high redshift. The median mass of the sample is M<sub>500c</sub>(rho<sub>crit</sub>) ~ 3.5x10<sup>14</sup> M<sub>sun</sub> h<sub>70</sub><sup>-1</sup>, the median redshift is z<sub>med</sub> = 0.55, and the highest-redshift systems are at z > 1.4. The combination of large redshift extent, clean selection, and high typical mass makes this cluster sample of particular interest for cosmological analyses and studies of cluster formation and evolution. The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10m diameter telescope located at the National Science Foundation Amundsen-Scott South Pole station in Antarctica. From 2008 to 2011 the telescope was used to conduct the SPT-SZ survey, a survey of ~ 2500 deg<sup>2</sup> of the southern sky at 95, 150, and 220 GHz. The survey covers a contiguous region from 20h to 7h in Right Ascension and -65 to -40 degrees in Declination (see, e.g., Figure 1 in Story et al. 2013, ApJ, 779, 86) and was mapped to depths of approximately 40, 18, and 70 microK-arcmin at 95, 150, and 220 GHz, respectively. The authors use optical and in some cases NIR imaging (Blanco Telescope, Magellan/Baade, Magellan/Clay, Swope, MPG/ESO, New Technology Telescope, Spitzer, WISE) to confirm candidates as clusters and to obtain redshifts for confirmed systems (see section 4 of the reference paper for more details). They have also used a variety of facilities to obtain spectroscopic observations of the SPT clusters (including VLT/FORS2 & Gemini/GMOS-S). This HEASARC table contains the total of 677 cluster candidates which were identified above a signal-to-noise threshold of xi = 4.5 in the 2500 deg<sup>2</sup> SPT-SZ survey. This table was created by the HEASARC in March 2015 based on an electronic version of Table 4 from the reference paper which was obtained from the CDS as their catalog J/ApJS/216/27 file table4.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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