The Hateful Eight: Connecting Massive Substructures in Galaxy Clusters like A2744 to Their Dynamical Assembly State Using the Magneticum Simulations

Abstract

Abstract Substructures are known to be good tracers for the dynamical states and recent accretion histories of the most massive collapsed structures in the universe, galaxy clusters. Observations find extremely massive substructures in some clusters, especially Abell 2744 (A2744), which are potentially in tension with the ΛCDM paradigm because they are not found in simulations directly. However, the methods to measure substructure masses strongly differ between observations and simulations. Using the fully hydrodynamical cosmological simulation suite Magneticum Pathfinder, we develop a method to measure substructure masses in projection from simulations, similarly to the observational approach. We identify a simulated A2744 counterpart that not only has eight substructures of similar mass fractions but also exhibits similar features in the hot gas component. This cluster formed only recently through a major merger together with at least six massive minor merger events since z = 1, where previously the most massive component had a mass of less than 1 × 1014 M ⊙. We show that the mass fraction of all substructures and of the eighth substructure separately are excellent tracers for the dynamical state and assembly history for all galaxy cluster mass ranges, with high fractions indicating merger events within the last 2 Gyr. Finally, we demonstrate that the differences between subhalo masses measured directly from simulations as bound and those measured in projection are due to methodology, with the latter generally 2–3 times larger than the former. We provide a predictor function to estimate projected substructure masses from SubFind masses for future comparison studies between simulations and observations.