Selection of a Luminous Red Galaxy Catalog with z ~ 0.8 for Subsequent Detections of the Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

Abstract

We present the development of two catalogs of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRG) at redshift z 0:8, created using color-color cuts utilizing optical data from SDSS and infrared data from WISE. 16,727 LRG candidates are selected within the 275 degree squared region of Stripe 82, utilizing high quality photometry from the SDSS coadds. The catalog is then extended over the full SDSS DR9 footprint, selecting 702,000 LRG candidates. This work serves as an initial step to further work in detecting temperature decrement due to the thermal Sunyaev Zel'dovich effect by stacking submaps in the ACT 2009 equatorial survey, as well as determining scaling relations between the integrated SZ signal and mass, building upon previous work at redshifts z < 0:55. Furthermore, we estimate a characterstic cluster mass of 1:5 1013M h􀀀1, utilizing weak lensing methods and previous work determining galaxy bias as a function of mass.