Diffuse Optical Light in Galaxy Clusters. II. Correlations with Cluster Properties

By J. Krick, R. Bernstein. 2007

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We have measured the flux, profile, color, and substructure in the diffuse intracluster light (ICL) in a sample of 10 galaxy clusters with a range of mass, morphology, redshift, and density. Deep, wide-field observations for this project were made in two bands at the 1 m Swope and 2.5 m du Pont telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory. Careful attention in reduction and analysis was paid to the illumination correction, background subtraction, point-spread function determination, and galaxy subtraction. ICL flux is detected in both bands in all 10 clusters ranging from 7.6 × 1010 to 7.0 × 1011 h L⊙ in r and 1.4 × 1010 to 1.2 × 1011 h L⊙ in the B band. These fluxes account for 6%-22% of the total cluster light within one-quarter of the virial radius in r and 4%-21% in the B band. Average ICL B - r colors range from 1.5 to 2.8 mag when k- and evolution corrected to the present epoch. In several clusters we also detect ICL in group environments near the cluster center and up to 1 h Mpc distant from the cluster center. Our sample, having been selected from the Abell sample, is incomplete in that it does not include high-redshift clusters with low density, low flux, or low mass, and it does not include low-redshift clusters with high flux, high mass, or high density. This bias makes it difficult to interpret correlations between ICL flux and cluster properties. Despite this selection bias, we do find that the presence of a cD galaxy corresponds to both centrally concentrated galaxy profiles and centrally concentrated ICL profiles. This is consistent with ICL either forming from galaxy interactions at the center or forming at earlier times in groups and later combining in the center.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a341b84210a38979a1fd1f3423edae4c9317d74d

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. Joop Schaye
3. R. Dav'e
4. Volker Springel
5. L. Hernquist
6. R. Somerville
7. P. Capak
8. A. Koekemoer

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. A. Koekemoer
2. T. O. S. University
3. Joop Schaye
4. M. Blanton
5. C. Booth
6. R. Bender
7. M. White
8. J. Bregman

In Instrumentation

1. P. Capak
2. Mara Salvato
3. A. Koekemoer
4. O. Ilbert
5. Joop Schaye
6. P. Hopkins
7. N. Scoville
8. H. McCracken

Citations in the corpus

• DO HOT HALOS AROUND GALAXIES CONTAIN THE MISSING BARYONS? (2010, background): “Due to the top-heavy IMF, they would have short lifetimes, so few of these early unbound stars would survive today, and the strict limits on intracluster light (e.g., Krick & Bernstein 2007) would not be violated.”
• A REVISED PARALLEL-SEQUENCE MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF GALAXIES: STRUCTURE AND FORMATION OF S0 AND SPHEROIDAL GALAXIES (2011, background): “…detection in Coma (Thuan & Kormendy 1977), intracluster light has been detected and studied in the Coma cluster (e. g., Adami et al. 2005; Okamura 2011) and in many other clusters (e. g., Krick & Bernstein 2007; Gonzalez et al. 2007, see Arnaboldi & Gerhard 2009 and Arnaboldi 2011 for reviews).”
• STELLAR AND TOTAL BARYON MASS FRACTIONS IN GROUPS AND CLUSTERS SINCE REDSHIFT 1 (2009, background): “In a complementary study Krick & Bernstein (2007) used a sample of massive clusters with a range of morphology, redshift and densities to find that the ICL contributes with 6%–22% to the total cluster light in r–band within one quarter of the virial radius, finding no appreciable correlation with…”
• Physical properties and environments of nearby galaxies (2009, background): “Zibetti et al. (2005) and a study of individual detections by Krick & Bernstein (2007) both conclude that of order 5%–20% of the total cluster optical light within 500 kpc or so comes from the ICL; the results of Gonzalez, Zabludoff & Zaritsky (2005) imply even more.”
• 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).”
• Impact of baryon physics on dark matter structures: a detailed simulation study of halo density profiles (2010, background): “This additional contribution likely ranges between 11 and 22 per cent (e.g. Zibetti et al. 2005; Krick & Bernstein 2007).”