Measuring Scatter in the Cluster Richness-Mass Relation for the Dark Energy Survey

Measuring the number density of galaxy clusters as a function of density and redshift places strong constraints on the dark energy equation of state. This measurement can be cheaply and cleanly accomplished using galaxy cluster richness as a mass proxy. In order to understand the intrinsic scatter in the richness-mass relationship, I have developed a pipeline to determine comparatively low-scatter x-ray mass proxies for galaxy clusters which appear in both archival Chandra data and in the Dark Energy Survey catalogue. These data can then be used to constrain the cluster richness-mass relation, which in turn is expected to improve the Dark Energy Survey figure-of-merit by a factor of two.