The importance of mergers for the origin of intracluster stars in cosmological simulations of galaxy clusters

By Giuseppe Murante, Martina Giovalli, O. Gerhard, M. Arnaboldi, Stefano Borgani, Klaus Dolag. 2007

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We study the origin of the diffuse stellar component (DSC) in 117 galaxy clusters extracted from a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. We identify all galaxies present in the simulated clusters at 17 output redshifts, starting with z= 3.5, and then build the family trees for all the z= 0 cluster galaxies. The most massive cluster galaxies show complex family trees, resembling the merger trees of dark matter haloes, while the majority of other cluster galaxies experience only one or two major mergers during their entire life history. Then, for each diffuse star particle identified at z= 0, we look for the galaxy to which it once belonged at an earlier redshift, thus linking the presence of the DSC to the galaxy formation history. The main results of our analysis are as follows. (i) On average, half of the DSC star particles come from galaxies associated with the family tree of the most massive galaxy (bright cluster galaxy – hereafter BCG), one quarter comes from the family trees of other massive galaxies and the remaining quarter from dissolved galaxies. That is, the formation of the DSC is parallel to the build-up of the BCG and other massive galaxies. (ii) Most DSC star particles become unbound during mergers in the formation history of the BCGs and of other massive galaxies, independent of cluster mass. Our results suggest that the tidal stripping mechanism is responsible only for a minor fraction of the DSC. (iii) At cluster radii larger than 250 h−1 kpc, the DSC fraction from the BCG is reduced and the largest contribution comes from the other massive galaxies; in the cluster outskirts, galaxies of all masses contribute to the DSC. (iv) The DSC does not have a preferred redshift of formation: however, most DSC stars are unbound at z < 1. (v) The amount of DSC stars at z= 0 does not correlate strongly with the global dynamical history of clusters, and increases weakly with cluster mass.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb27f1491f3167bfca8fe007d973cd0c7bc4a4ca

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Citations in the corpus

STELLAR AND TOTAL BARYON MASS FRACTIONS IN GROUPS AND CLUSTERS SINCE REDSHIFT 1 (2009, result): “This range is consistent with the theoretical results by Murante et al. (2007) and Purcell et al. (2008), in their attempt of modelling the ICL by numerical simulations.”
The Hierarchical Build-Up of Massive Galaxies and the Intracluster Light since z = 1 (2007, background): “These assumptions are motivated by hydrodynamical simulations of clusters (Willman et al. 2004; Murante et al. 2004; Rudick et al. 2006; Murante et al. 2007; Sommer-Larsen et al. 2005) that showed that the majority of the ICL is built up at z < 1 from major mergers with the central galaxy, rather…”
Intracluster stars in simulations with active galactic nucleus feedback (2010, background): “The origin of intracluster stars was studied in particular detail in Murante et al. (2007) finding an ICL fraction that rises with halo mass from ∼ 10% at the group scale to ∼ 30% for massive clusters.”
Diffuse Optical Light in Galaxy Clusters. II. Correlations with Cluster Properties (2007, background): “Our data for ICL fraction as a function of mass is inconsistent with the theoretical predictions of Murante et al. (2004), Murante et al. (2007) (based on a cosmological hydrodynamical simulation including radiative cooling, star formation, and supernova feedback), and Lin & Mohr (2004)(based on a…”
Simulating the effect of active galactic nuclei feedback on the metal enrichment of galaxy clusters (2009, background): “In fact, these stars have time to leave st r forming regions, as a consequence of the same dynamical effects which generate a population of inter-galactic stars (e.g., Murante et al. 2007; Zibetti et al. 2005), thereby providing a more widesprad enrichment pattern.”
A semi-analytic model for the co-evolution of galaxies, black holes and active galactic nuclei (2008, background): “It is now thought that these ‘diffuse stellar haloes’ (DSH) originated from tidally disrupted merging satellites and/or scattering of stars during major mergers (Murante et al. 2004; Monaco et al. 2006; Conroy, Wechsler & Kravtsov 2007; Murante et al. 2007; Purcell, Bullock & Zentner 2007).”
Stellar Mass—Halo Mass Relation and Star Formation Efficiency in High-Mass Halos (2014, background): “The BCGs do have the outer extended envelope that likely forms by mergers and tidal stripping of satellite galaxies (e.g., Murante et al. 2007; Conroy et al. 2007a; Purcell et al. 2007; Puchwein et al. 2010; Feldmann et al. 2010; Watson et al. 2012) and can thus be significantly larger than the…”
Shaping the galaxy stellar mass function with supernova- and AGN-driven winds (2012, background): “…that are bound to their member galaxies but also a significant diffuse stellar component (e.g., Zibetti et al. 2005; McGee & Balogh 2010) which is also found in cosmological simulations (Murante et al. 2004; Willman et al. 2004; Sommer-Larsen et al. 2005; Murante et al. 2007; Puchwein et al. 2010).”
Substructures in hydrodynamical cluster simulations (2008, methodology): “To verify our method, wereanalyzed some of the clusters studied in Murante et al. (2007) with the new method and compared the identified stellar components ofthe individual galaxies.”
PRIMUS: CONSTRAINTS ON STAR FORMATION QUENCHING AND GALAXY MERGING, AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE STELLAR MASS FUNCTION FROM z = 0–1 (2013, methodology): “…this technique is its implicit assumption that mergers retain all the stellar mass involved in the merger, when it is likely that a non-negligible fraction of that mass is dispersed to large radii to form the diffuse stellar component (DSC) of groups and clusters (e.g., Murante et al. 2007).”
The cluster gas mass fraction as a cosmological probe: a revised study (2009, unknown): “Numerical simulations (e.g. Willman et al. 2004; Murante et al. 2004, 2007) suggest that the ICL mostly originates from the merging processes taking place during the assembly of massive cluster galaxies.”
Shredded Galaxies as the Source of Diffuse Intrahalo Light on Varying Scales (2007, background): “This mild trend has also been recovered by numerical simulations (Murante et al. 2004, 2007; Monaco et al. 2006), as well as observations of intracluster luminosity as a function of cluster richness (e.g., Zibetti et al. 2005).”