Cosmology with the largest galaxy cluster surveys: going beyond Fisher matrix forecasts

We make the first detailed MCMC likelihood study of cosmological constraints that are expected from some of the largest, ongoing and proposed, cluster surveys in different wave-bands and compare the estimates to the prevalent Fisher matrix forecasts. Mock catalogs of cluster counts expected from the surveys -- eROSITA, WFXT, RCS2, DES and Planck, along with a mock dataset of follow-up mass calibrations are analyzed for this purpose. A fair agreement between MCMC and Fisher results is found only in the case of minimal models. However, for many cases, the marginalized constraints obtained from Fisher and MCMC methods can differ by factors of 30-100%. The discrepancy can be alarmingly large for a time dependent dark energy equation of state, w (a) ; the Fisher methods are seen to under-estimate the constraints by as much as a factor of 4--5. Typically, Fisher estimates become more and more inappropriate as we move away from LCDM, to a constant-w dark energy to varying-w dark energy cosmologies. Fisher analysis, also, predicts incorrect parameter degeneracies. From the point of mass-calibration uncertainties, a high value of unknown scatter about the mean mass-observable relation, and its redshift dependence, is seen to have large degeneracies with the cosmological parameters sigma₈ and w (a) and can degrade the cosmological constraints considerably. We find that the addition of mass-calibrated cluster datasets can improve dark energy and sigma₈ constraints by factors of 2--3 from what can be obtained compared to CMB+SNe+BAO only. Since, details of future cluster surveys are still being planned, we emphasize that optimal survey design must be done using MCMC analysis rather than Fisher forecasting. abridged