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S.W. Chambers, A.L. Melott (University of Kansas, Lawrence), C.J. Miller (University of Maine, Orona)
We have examined whether the major axes of rich galaxy clusters tend to point (in projection) toward their nearest neighboring cluster. We used the data of Ulmer, McMillan and Kowalski, who used x-ray morphology to define position angles. Our cluster samples, with well measured redshifts and updated positions, were taken from the MX Northern Abell Cluster Survey. The usual Kolmogorov-Smirnov test shows no significant alignment signal for nonrandom angles for all separations less than 100 Mpc/h. Refining the null hypothesis, however, with the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, reveals a high confidence signal for alignment. This confidence is highest when we restrict our sample to small nearest neighbor separations. We conclude that we have identified a more powerful tool for testing cluster-cluster alignments. Moreover, there is a strong signal in the data for alignment, consistent with a picture of hierarchical cluster formation in which matter falls into clusters along large scale filamentary structures.