NIKA Sunyaev-Zel'dovich data release

In three of our six NIKA-observed clusters we identify features at high signal-to-noise ratio that show clear evidence for merger events. In MACS J0717.5+3745 (z=0.55), three strong pressure gradients are observed on the east, southeast, and west sectors, and two main peaks in the pressure distribution are identified. We observe a lack of tSZ compact structure in the cool-core cluster PSZ1 G045.85+57.71 (z=0.61), and a tSZ gradient ridge dominates in the southeast.

In the highest redshift cluster, CL J1226.9+3332 (z=0.89), we detect a ridge pressure gradient of ~45-arcsec (360kpc) in length associated with a secondary pressure peak in the west region. Our results show that current tSZ facilities have now reached the angular resolution and sensitivity to allow an exploration of the details of pressure substructures in clusters, even at high redshift. This opens the possibility to quantify the impact of the dynamical state on the relation between the tSZ signal and the mass of clusters, which is important when using tSZ clusters to test cosmological models.

This work also marks the first NIKA cluster sample data release.