K-band Properties of Galaxy Clusters and Groups: Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Intracluster Light

By Yen-Ting Lin, Joseph J. Mohr. 2004

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We investigate the near-infrared K-band properties of the brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in a sample of 93 X-ray galaxy clusters and groups, using data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey. Our cluster sample spans a factor of 70 in mass, making it sensitive to any cluster mass-related trends. We derive the cumulative radial distribution for the BCGs in the ensemble and find that 70% of the BCGs are centered in the cluster to within 5% of the virial radius r200; this quantifies earlier findings that BCG position coincides with the cluster center as defined by the X-ray emission peak. We study the correlations between the luminosity of the BCGs (Lb) and the mass and the luminosity of the host clusters, finding that BCGs in more massive clusters are more luminous than their counterparts in less massive systems and that the BCGs become less important in the overall cluster light (L200) as cluster mass increases. By examining a large sample of optically selected groups, we find that these correlations hold for galactic systems less massive than our clusters (<3 × 1013 M☉). From the differences between luminosity functions in high- and low-mass clusters, we argue that BCGs grow in luminosity mainly by merging with other luminous galaxies as the host clusters grow hierarchically; the decreasing BCG luminosity fraction (Lb/L200) with cluster mass indicates that the rate of luminosity growth in BCGs is slow compared to the rate at which clusters acquire galaxy light from the field or other merging clusters. Utilizing the observed correlation between the cluster luminosity and mass and a merger tree model for cluster formation, we estimate that the amount of intracluster light (ICL) increases with cluster mass; our calculations suggest that in 1015 M☉ clusters more than 50% of total stellar mass is in ICL, making the role of ICL very important in the evolution and thermodynamic history of clusters. The cluster baryon fraction accounting for the ICL is in good agreement with the value derived from cosmic microwave background observations. The inclusion of ICL reduces the discrepancy between the observed cluster cold baryon fraction and that found in hydrodynamical simulations. Based on the observed iron abundance in the intracluster medium, we find that the ICL predicted by our model, together with the observed galaxy light, match the iron mass-to-light ratio expected from simple stellar population models, provided that the Salpeter initial mass function is adopted. The ICL also makes it easier to produce the "iron excess" found in the central regions of cool-core clusters.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Global and Planetary Change, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4ec53423687509c73f28ac8c7ffa59612c3a9416

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Citations in the corpus

Theoretical Models of the Halo Occupation Distribution: Separating Central and Satellite Galaxies (2004, background): “Lin, Mohr, & Stanford (2004) and Lin & Mohr (2004) find that the K-band LF of 2MASS cluster galaxies can be fit by a Schechter function if the brightest cluster galaxies are excluded.”
THE AVERAGE STAR FORMATION HISTORIES OF GALAXIES IN DARK MATTER HALOS FROM z = 0–8 (2012, background): “Comparisons to other data sets atz ≤ 1.0 (Moster et al. 2010; Guo et al. 2010; Wang & Jing 2010; Zheng et al. 2007a; Yang et al. 2009a; Hansen et al. 2009; Lin & Mohr 2004) are discussed extensively in Behroozi et al. (2010), so we do not repeat that discussion here.”
Intracluster stars in simulations with active galactic nucleus feedback (2010, background): “Lin and Mohr (2004) give an overview of the fractions of intracluster stars reported in the literature for different clusters and groups (see their Table 2).”
Galaxy Evolution from Halo Occupation Distribution Modeling of DEEP2 and SDSS Galaxy Clustering (2007, methodology): “Using the Xray masses of clusters/groups and the K-band luminosity of the brightest cluster galaxies in the Two Mi- cron All Sky Survey (2MASS), Lin & Mohr (2004) find 〈Lc〉 ∝ M0.”
The cluster gas mass fraction as a cosmological probe: a revised study (2009, result): “Consistently with observational results for the Virgo cluster (Feldmeier et al. 2004), simulations predict fICL ≈ 0.2 fstar in lower mass systems, with an increasing fraction up to fICL ≈ fstar in 1015 M clusters (e.g. Lin & Mohr 2004).”
The kinematic connection between galaxies and dark matter haloes (2010, background): “These massive early-types are centrals in clusters, and so there is a substantial (possibly dominant) contribution to the total stellar mass budget in those haloes from satellite galaxies (e.g. Lin & Mohr 2004).”
MERGERS AND BULGE FORMATION IN ΛCDM: WHICH MERGERS MATTER? (2009, background): “…constraints on the mass budget in extended galaxy halos, intra-group and intra-cluster light can constrain satellite disruption (see e.g. Lin & Mohr 2004; Cypriano et al. 2006; Brown et al. 2008; Laganá et al. 2008), and observations of high redshift disk+bulge systems that may…”
The 2M++ galaxy redshift catalogue (2011, background): “−25, or two magnitudes brighter than M∗, and is presumably due to brightest cluster galaxies, which have typical Kband magnitudes of ∼ −26 (Lin & Mohr 2004) and have long been known to deviate from the extrapolation of a Schechter function Tremaine & Richstone (1977).”
redMaPPer. I. ALGORITHM AND SDSS DR8 CATALOG (2013, background): “In addition, it has been found to be a good description of the radial distribution of cluster galaxies (Lin & Mohr 2004; Hansen et al. 2005; Popesso et al. 2007).”
Revealing the Properties of Dark Matter in the Merging Cluster MACS J0025.4–1222 (2008, background): “%) within this aperture are also normal (see e.g. Kneib et al. 2003; Lin & Mohr 2004).”
STELLAR AND TOTAL BARYON MASS FRACTIONS IN GROUPS AND CLUSTERS SINCE REDSHIFT 1 (2009, background): “…which lower fb in clusters relative to the universal fraction (see e.g. Bialek et al. 2001; He et al. 2006), baryon components that fail detection by standard X-ray and/or optical techniques (see Ettori 2003; Lin & Mohr 2004), or a systematic underestimate of Ωm by WMAP (McCarthy et al. 2007).”
Galactic accretion and the outer structure of galaxies in the CDM model (2013, neutral): “…of diffuse ‘intracluster light’ (ICL) (Matthews, Morgan & Schmidt 1964; Oemler 1976; Thuan & Romanishin 1981; Schombert 1988; Graham et al. 1996; Lin & Mohr 2004; Gonzalez, Zabludoff, & Zaritsky 2005; Mihos et al. 2005; Krick, Bernstein, & Pimbblet 2006; Donzelli, Muriel, & Madrid 2011) which…”
What determines satellite galaxy disruption (2009, background): “…are observed to contain an appreciable amount of stellar material in the form of ICL, though given its low surface brightness, constraints on the ICL vary considerably, from 5 − 50% of the total cluster light (Lin & Mohr 2004; Zibetti et al. 2005; Gonzalez et al. 2007; Krick & Bernstein 2007).”
The realm of the galaxy protoclusters (2016, background): “…and contain a smaller fraction of the total light with increasing cluster mass. BCGs accumulate their mass primarily through mergers, and the mass fraction of stars contained in the ICM, believed to be a by-product of such mergers, increases with increasing cluster mass (Lin & Mohr, 2004).”
THE GALAXY CONTENT OF SDSS CLUSTERS AND GROUPS (2007, methodology): “Using a sample of 93 clusters with both X-ray and K-band data, Lin & Mohr (2004) found that BCG light scales with mass as LBCG,K−band ∼ M0.”