How special are Brightest Group and Cluster Galaxies

By A. V. D. Linden, P. Best, G. Kauffmann, Simon D. M. White. 2006

291 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to construct a sample of 625 brightest group and cluster galaxies (BCGs) together with control samples of non-BCGs matched in stellar mass, redshift and colour. We investigate how the systematic properties of BCGs depend on stellar mass and on their privileged location near the cluster centre. The groups and clusters that we study are drawn from the C4 catalogue of Miller et al. but we have developed improved algorithms for identifying the BCG and for measuring the cluster velocity dispersion. Since the SDSS photometric pipeline tends to underestimate the luminosities of large galaxies in dense environments, we have developed a correction for this effect which can be readily applied to the published catalogue data. We find that BCGs are larger and have higher velocity dispersions than non-BCGs of the same stellar mass, which implies that BCGs contain a larger fraction of dark matter. In contrast to non-BCGs, the dynamical mass-to-light ratio of BCGs does not vary as a function of galaxy luminosity. Hence BCGs lie on a different Fundamental Plane than ordinary elliptical galaxies. BCGs also follow a steeper Faber-Jackson relation than non-BCGs, as suggested by models in which BCGs assemble via dissipationless mergers along preferentially radial orbits. We find tentative evidence that this steepening is stronger in more massive clusters. BCGs have similar mean stellar ages and metallicities to non-BCGs of the same mass, but they have somewhat higher a/Fe ratios, indicating that star formation may have occurred over a shorter time-scale in the BCGs. Finally, we find that BCGs are more likely to host radio-loud active galactic nuclei than other galaxies of the same mass, but are less likely to host an optical active galactic nucleus (AGN). The differences we find are more pronounced for the less massive BCGs, i.e. they are stronger at the galaxy group level.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/be0c1f3abd62c9dd4911c31d3ff19d75dc59719c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “The prevalence of radio-AGN activity amongst brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) is especially high (Best et al. 2007, Croft et al. 2007; cf. Burns 1990), while that of optical AGN is lower than in non-BCG galaxies of the same mass (von der Linden et al. 2007).”
GALAXY GROUPS IN THE SDSS DR4. III. THE LUMINOSITY AND STELLAR MASS FUNCTIONS (2008, background): “Finally, we caution that the SDSS pipeline may have underestimated the luminosities for bright galaxies (e.g. von der Linden et al. 2007; Guo et al. 2009).”
Curvature in the scaling relations of early-type galaxies (2008, methodology): “And statistically significant detections of curvature in many scaling relations across the entire population have now been made (Zaritsky et al. 2006; Lauer et al. 2007; Bernardi et al. 2007; Desroches et al. 2007; Liu et al. 2008; but see von der Linden et al. 2007).”
DISSIPATION AND EXTRA LIGHT IN GALACTIC NUCLEI. IV. EVOLUTION IN THE SCALING RELATIONS OF SPHEROIDS (2008, background): “…some of the central dense stellar mass in observed brightest cluster or group galaxies atz = 0; this is consistent with the observed sizes (von der Linden et al. 2007), surface brightness profile shapes (extended envelopes build up through their subsequent dry merging) (see e.g. Paper III and…”
redMaPPer. I. ALGORITHM AND SDSS DR8 CATALOG (2013, background): “We assume every galaxy cluster halo has a bright, dominant galaxy residing at its center (e.g., von der Linden et al. 2007, 2012; Menanteau et al. 2013; Mahdavi et al. 2012; Song et al. 2012b; Stott et al. 2012, see also paper II).”
On the prevalence of radio‐loud active galactic nuclei in brightest cluster galaxies: implications for AGN heating of cooling flows (2006, methodology): “At given stellar mass, the radio-loud fraction of BCGs is indistinguishable between rich and poor clusters. relation is also applicable for BCGs, or whether these follow a different relation (e.g. von der Linden et al. 2007).”
AGN heating and ICM cooling in the HIFLUGCS sample of galaxy clusters (2008, background): “…results over the last couple of decades have confirmed that radio-loud AGN dwell preferentially in brightest group and cluster galaxies (BCGs), as opposed to other galaxies of the same stellar mass (von der Linden et al. 2007; Best et al. 2007; Bagchi & Kapahi 1994; Valentijn & Bijleveld 1983).”
Weighing the Giants - I. Weak-lensing masses for 51 massive galaxy clusters: project overview, data analysis methods and cluster images (2012, background): “In many clusters, the BCG is indeed located near the bottom of the gravitational well of the cluster (e.g. Allen 1998; Smith et al. 2005; von der Linden et al. 2007; Best et al. 2007), but this is not always the case (Lin & Mohr 2004; Skibba et al. 2011).”
Erratum: From dwarf spheroidals to cD galaxies: simulating the galaxy population in a ΛCDM cosmology (2010, methodology): “Symbols with error bars are observational data from Weinmann et al. (2009) based on the SDSS cluster sample of von der Linden et al. (2007).”
Star formation and AGN activity in SDSS cluster galaxies (2009, methodology): “We exclude the BCGs from the galaxy sample, as we have shown that they differ systematically from other galaxies (von der Linden et al. 2007; Best et al. 2007).”
THE MBH–LSPHEROID RELATION AT HIGH AND LOW MASSES, THE QUADRATIC GROWTH OF BLACK HOLES, AND INTERMEDIATE-MASS BLACK HOLE CANDIDATES (2012, background): “−20.5 mag: Schechter 1980; Malumuth & Kirshner 1981; Von Der Linden et al. 2007; Liu et al. 2008) and possibly even as steep as L ∝ σ6 (Lauer et al. 2007), while L ∝ σ2 at intermediate and faint luminosities (e.g. Davies et al. 1983; Held et al. 1992; de Rijcke et al. 2005; Matković & Guzmán…”
Are Brightest Halo Galaxies Central Galaxies (2010, background): “However, recent analyses of galaxies in groups and clusters (e.g., Weinmann et al. 2006; Skibba et al. 2007; von der Linden et al. 2007; van den Bosch et al. 2008; Pasquali et al. 2009, 2010; Skibba 2009; Hansen et al. 2009) and halo model analyses of galaxy clustering (e.g., Skibba et al. 2006;…”
Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – II. The effect of environment on interactions (2010, methodology): “The cluster catalogue is based on the compilation of von der Linden et al. (2007) who refined the C4 algorithm (Miller et al. 2005) and applied it to the DR4.”
The environmental history of group and cluster galaxies in a Λ cold dark matter universe (2011, methodology): “Red diamonds, blue triangles, and black circles show the fractions of red galaxies for the Coma cluster, for the Virgo cluster, and for the cluster catalogue by von der Linden et al. (2007), respectively.”
The realm of the galaxy protoclusters (2016, background): “BCGs have several important structural and chemical properties distinct from non-BCGs of the same stellar mass, and more frequently host radio-loud AGN (von der Linden et al., 2007; Best et al., 2007).”
MASS AND ENVIRONMENT AS DRIVERS OF GALAXY EVOLUTION. II. THE QUENCHING OF SATELLITE GALAXIES AS THE ORIGIN OF ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS (2011, background): “Many recent observational analyses have therefore distinguished between satellites and centrals (e.g. Weinmann et al. 2006 & 2009; von der Linden et al. 2007; van den Bosch et al. 2008a & 2008b; Yang et al. 2009a & 2009b; Pasquali et al. 2009 & 2010; Skibba 2009; Hansen et al. 2009; Kimm et al.…”
Mapping stellar content to dark matter haloes using galaxy clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing in the SDSS DR7 (2015, background): “Among those locked in stars, how much stellar mass is stored within the central galaxies of the dark matter halos (De Lucia & Blaizot 2007; von der Linden et al. 2007), and how is the rest distributed among the satellite galaxies within their larger host halos (Hansen et al. 2009; Yang et al. 2009;…”
The DEEP3 Galaxy Redshift Survey: the impact of environment on the size evolution of massive early-type galaxies at intermediate redshift (2011, background): “…brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in the local Universe find that BCGs tend to be larger than early types of comparable stellar mass in less-dense environs (e.g. Bernardi et al. 2007; Desroches et al. 2007; von der Linden et al. 2007; Liu et al. 2008, see also Boylan-Kolchin, Ma & Quataert 2006).”
Discriminating Between the Physical Processes that Drive Spheroid Size Evolution (2009, background): “…most massive, first-toassemble high-redshift systems) appear to lie significantly above the Shen et al. (2003) size–mass relation for more recently assembled field galaxies (see e.g. Batcheldor et al. 2007; Bernardi et al. 2007; Lauer et al. 2007c; von der Linden et al. 2007; Kormendy et al. 2009).”