Mass-galaxy offsets in Abell 3827, 2218 and 1689: intrinsic properties or line-of-sight substructures?

Abstract

We have made mass maps of three strong-lensing clusters, Abell 3827, Abell 2218 and Abell 1689, in order to test for mass-light offsets. The technique used is GRALE, which enables lens reconstruction with minimal assumptions, and specifically with no information about the cluster light being given. In the first two of these clusters, we find local mass peaks in the central regions that are displaced from the nearby galaxies by a few to several kpc. These offsets could be due to line-of-sight structure unrelated to the clusters, but that is very unlikely, given the typical levels of chance line-of-sight coincidences in Λ cold dark matter simulations - for Abell 3827 and Abell 2218 the offsets appear to be intrinsic. In the case of Abell 1689, we see no significant offsets in the central region, but we do detect a possible line-of-sight structure: it appears only when sources at z ≳ 3 are used for reconstructing the mass. We discuss possible origins of the mass-galaxy offsets in Abell 3827 and Abell 2218: these include pure gravitational effects like dynamical friction, but also non-standard mechanisms like self-interacting dark matter.