The Planck cluster survey

Abstract

The Planck Satellite will survey the entire sky in 9 millimeter/submillimeter bands and detect thousands of galaxy clusters via their thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. The unprecedented volume of the survey will permit the construction of a unique catalog of massive clusters out to redshifts of order unity. We describe the expected contents of this catalog and use an empirical model of the intra-cluster gas to predict the X-ray properties of Planck SZ clusters. Using this information we show how a ∼ 10 Ms follow-up program on XMM-Newton could increase by ∼ 100-fold the number of clusters with measured temperatures in the redshift range z=0.5-1. Such a large sample of well-studied massive clusters at these redshifts would be a powerful cosmological tool and a significant legacy for XMM-Newton.