The Effect of a Nonthermal Tail on the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect in Clusters of Galaxies

We study the spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background radiation induced by the effect in clusters of galaxies when the target electrons have a modified Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution with a high-energy nonthermal tail. Bremsstrahlung radiation from this type of electron distribution may explain the suprathermal X-ray emission observed in some clusters such as the Coma Cluster and A2199 and serve as an alternative to the classical but problematic inverse Compton scattering interpretation. We show that the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect can be used as a powerful tool to probe the electron distribution in clusters of galaxies and discriminate among these different interpretations of the X-ray excess. The existence of a nonthermal tail can have important consequences for cluster-based estimators of cosmological parameters.