The SPT-deep cluster catalog: Sunyaev–Zel’dovich selected clusters from combined SPT-3G and SPTpol measurements over 100 square degrees

Kornoelje, K., Bleem, L. E., Rykoff, E. S., Abbott, T. M. C., Ade, P. A. R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5127-0401 and Tucker, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1851-3918 2026. The SPT-deep cluster catalog: Sunyaev–Zel’dovich selected clusters from combined SPT-3G and SPTpol measurements over 100 square degrees. The Astrophysical Journal 1004 (1) , 48. 10.3847/1538-4357/ae5f7b

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Abstract

We present a catalog of 500 galaxy cluster candidates in the SPT-Deep field: a 100 deg2 field that combines data from the SPT-3G and SPTpol surveys to reach noise levels of 3.0, 2.2, and 9.0 μK-arcmin at 95, 150, and 220 GHz, respectively. Candidates are selected via the thermal Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (SZ) effect with a minimum significance of ξ = 4.0, resulting in a catalog of purity ∼89%. Optical data from the Dark Energy Survey and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope are used to confirm 442 cluster candidates. The clusters span 0.12 < z ≲ 1.8 and 1.0 × 1014M⊙/h70 < M500c < 8.7 × 1014M⊙/h70. The sample’s median redshift is 0.74, and the median mass is 1.7 × 1014M⊙/h70; these are the lowest median mass and highest median redshift of any SZ-selected sample to date. We assess the effect of infrared emission from cluster member galaxies on cluster selection by performing a joint fit to the infrared dust and tSZ signals by combining measurements from SPT and overlapping submillimeter data from Herschel/SPIRE. We find that at high redshift (z > 1), the tSZ signal is reduced by 17.9−3.2+3.8% ( 3.8−0.7+0.9% ) at 150 GHz (95 GHz) due to dust contamination. We repeat our cluster finding method on dust-nulled SPT maps and find the resulting catalog is consistent with the nominal SPT-Deep catalog, suggesting dust contamination does not significantly impact the SPT-Deep selection function; we attribute this lack of bias to the inclusion of the SPT 220 GHz band.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Physics and Astronomy
Additional Information:	For full author list see https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae5f7b
Publisher:	American Astronomical Society
ISSN:	0004-637X
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 June 2026
Date of Acceptance:	20 February 2026
Last Modified:	02 Aug 2026 10:22
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187506

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