Weak-lensing Analysis of 30 Merging Clusters that Exhibit Radio Relics

As the most energetic events in the universe since the Big Bang, collisions of galaxy clusters are important laboratories for understanding high-energy astrophysics and the formation and growth of the large-scale structure. Radio relics, synchrotron from charged particles accelerated in merger-induced shocks, are an indication of a recent collision. My thesis contains a weak-lensing analysis of thirty merging clusters that exhibit radio relics. I will present weak-lensing mass distributions for the most intriguing clusters and explain the merger scenarios that are devised from the multiwavelength data. I will then present a statistical analysis of the mass estimates for the population of merging clusters and provide insight into fitting the mass of unrelaxed systems.