Intracluster Light in Nearby Galaxy Clusters: Relationship to the Halos of Brightest Cluster Galaxies

By Anthony H. Gonzalez, Ann Zabludoff, Dennis Zaritsky. 2004

263 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a detailed analysis of the surface brightness distribution of the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) in each of 24 galaxy clusters at 0.03 < z < 0.13. We use two-dimensional profile fitting to model the surface brightness out to r = 300 kpc for each BCG, comparing r1/4, r1/n, and double r1/4 models. We obtain statistically superior fits using a two-component model consisting of a pair of r1/4 profiles with independent scale lengths, ellipticities, and orientations. The two-component model can simply reproduce the observed position angle and ellipticity gradients, which cannot generally be explained purely by triaxiality. The inner component of our two-component model has properties similar to those of a typical massive elliptical galaxy and is clearly associated with the BCG. The outer component is 10-40 times larger in scale, has ~10 times the total luminosity of the inner component, and exhibits a steeper ⟨μ⟩-re relation than that of the elliptical fundamental plane. We interpret this outer component as a population of intracluster stars that trace the cluster potential. The two components are strongly aligned (|Δθ| < 10°) in roughly 40% of the clusters. When they are not aligned, the components tend toward high degrees of misalignment, suggesting that accretion of infalling material may change the orientation of some BCGs for a time. The extent of the outer component and its similar elongation to published cluster galaxy distributions indicates that the evolution of the intracluster light is tied to the cluster as a whole rather than to the BCG.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b43f5d2d5180c92f77b264f7c8d6e18b15ab279c

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Citations in the corpus

AGN heating and ICM cooling in the HIFLUGCS sample of galaxy clusters (2008, background): “This is due to the fact that many BCGs are often accompanied by low surface brightness envelopes extending out to, as far as, several hundred kiloparsecs (Gonzalez et al. 2005).”
Fundamental Planes and the Barless MBH-σ Relation for Supermassive Black Holes (2008, unknown): “Therefore, before concluding a problem exists with the BCGs, it would be prudent to actually perform a galaxy/envelope decomposition (e.g. Gonzalez et al. 2005; Seigar et al. 2007) of such systems (not just those in Lauer et al.)”
NEW CONSTRAINTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR-TO-DARK MATTER CONNECTION: A COMBINED ANALYSIS OF GALAXY–GALAXY LENSING, CLUSTERING, AND STELLAR MASS FUNCTIONS FROM z = 0.2 to z = 1 (2011, background): “We note that in massive halos, the intra-cluster light (ICL; not accounted for in this analysis) is estimated to contribute an additional 20%–30% of the total stellar mass (Feldmeier et al. 2004; Zibetti et al. 2005; Gonzalez et al. 2005; Krick et al. 2006).”
Intracluster stars in simulations with active galactic nucleus feedback (2010, background): “For a mean cluster mass of 7 − 8 × 1013M⊙ they find that about ∼ 22% of the stars reside in the BCG, while roughly ∼ 11% are intracluster stars within a fixed aperture of 500 kpc. Gonzalez et al. (2005, 2007) describe another study for which a significant number of clusters and groups were observed.”
A MaxBCG Catalog of 13,823 Galaxy Clusters from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2007, background): “It should also be useful to include measures of the diffuse optical light in the clusters, as this may include as much as 40% of the total optical light (Zibetti et al. 2005; Gonzalez et al. 2005; Krick et al. 2006).”
Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, background): “Recent observations of diffuse intracluster light and of intracluster stars (Zibetti et al. 2005; Gerhard et al. 2005; Mihos et al. 2005; Gonzalez et al. 2005; Aguerri et al. 2006; Gonzalez et al. 2007; McGee & Balogh 2010) indicate that a significant fraction of all cluster stars lie between the…”
The Luminosities, Sizes, and Velocity Dispersions of Brightest Cluster Galaxies: Implications for Formation History (2006, background): “Galaxy clusters contain a substantial population of stars which are not associated with a galaxy (e.g. Gonzalez et al. 2005; Zibetti et al. 2005).”
The Hierarchical Build-Up of Massive Galaxies and the Intracluster Light since z = 1 (2007, methodology): “%) of the combined light from the central galaxy and ICL (Gonzalez et al. 2005; Seigar et al. 2007 note that this fraction depends sensitively on theway that the ICL and BCG are separated).”
STELLAR AND TOTAL BARYON MASS FRACTIONS IN GROUPS AND CLUSTERS SINCE REDSHIFT 1 (2009, methodology): “We note that Gonzalez et al. (2005) give ICL/BCG>5 by applying a simultaneous decomposition of the surface brightness distribution of BCG+ICL in two De Vaucouleurs components: the outer one is considered as the genuine ICL and the inner one as the BCG. Conversely, Zibetti et al. (2005) obtain…”
Diffuse Optical Light in Galaxy Clusters. II. Correlations with Cluster Properties (2007, methodology): “This is well beyond the radius at which ICL components have been identified in other clusters (Krick et al. 2006; Feldmeier et al. 2002; Gonzalez et al. 2005; Zibetti et al. 2005).”
The Frontier Fields lens modelling comparison project (2016, methodology): “These are obtained by fitting real cluster galaxies in a set of low to intermediate redshift clusters (Gonzalez et al. 2005).”
THE GALAXY CONTENT OF SDSS CLUSTERS AND GROUPS (2007, background): “The outer light profile of BCGs often merges smoothly with the diffuse intra-cluster light (ICL), suggesting again a coupling between the BCG and the host halo (Gonzalez et al. 2005).”
A semi-analytic model for the co-evolution of galaxies, black holes and active galactic nuclei (2008, background): “…several factors may play a role, such as the different extent of the photometry and sample selection, much of the discrepancy with the results of Gonzalez et al. (2005) is apparently due to the details of the way the BCG and DSH (or intracluster light) are defined (A. Gonzalez and S. Zibetti,…”
THE DENSITY PROFILES OF MASSIVE, RELAXED GALAXY CLUSTERS. I. THE TOTAL DENSITY OVER THREE DECADES IN RADIUS (2012, unknown): “At larger radii, some BCGs have a cD-type upturn in their surface brightness profile that is not well fit with a single-component model (e.g., Gonzalez et al. 2005).”
A Census of Baryons in Galaxy Clusters and Groups (2007, methodology): “%) of the total light in the two components (Gonzalez et al. 2005).”
How special are Brightest Group and Cluster Galaxies (2006, background): “Indeed, Gonzalez et al. (2005) and Bernardi et al. (2006) find comparatively large Sersic indices (and thus shallow profiles) when fitting BCG light profiles with Sersic profiles.”
Intergalactic stars in z∼ 0.25 galaxy clusters: systematic properties from stacking of Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging data (2005, methodology): “Parametrizing the SB excesses in our data in terms of a R1/4 law between 150 and 500 kpc, we find an effective radius R e∼ 250–300 kpc, consistent with the range of outer Re measured by Gonzalez et al. (2005), although their distribution is peaked at a somewhat lower value, around 100 kpc.”