Fossil Groups in the Millennium Simulation. Evolution of the Brightest Galaxies

Abstract

We create a catalogue of simulated fossil groups and study their properties, in particular the merging histories of their first-ranked galaxies. We compare the simulated fossil group properties with those of both simulated non-fossil and observed fossil groups. Using simulations and a mock galaxy catalogue, we searched for massive ($>$ 5 $\times$ 10${}^{13}{h}^{-1}{\mathcal{M}}_{\odot }$) fossil groups in the Millennium Simulation Galaxy Catalogue. In addition, attempted to identify observed fossil groups in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 6 using identical selection criteria. Our predictions on the basis of the simulation data are:(a) fossil groups comprise about 5.5% of the total population of groups/clusters with masses larger than 5 x 10${}^{13}{h}^{-1}{\mathcal{M}}_{\odot }$. This fraction is consistent with the fraction of fossil groups identified in the SDSS, after all observational biases have been taken into account; (b) about 88% of the dominant central objects in fossil groups are elliptical galaxies that have a median R-band absolute magnitude of $\sim -23.5-5logh$, which is typical of the observed fossil groups known in the literature; (c)first-ranked galaxies of systems with $\mathcal{M}>$ 5 x 10${}^{13}{h}^{-1}{\mathcal{M}}_{\odot }$, regardless of whether they are either fossil or non-fossil, are mainly formed by gas-poor mergers; (d) although fossil groups, in general, assembled most of their virial masses at higher redshifts in comparison with non-fossil groups, first-ranked galaxies in fossil groups merged later, i.e. at lower redshifts, compared with their non-fossil-group counterparts. We therefore expect to observe a number of luminous galaxies in the centres of fossil groups that show signs of a recent major merger.

9 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics

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Cited by in corpus (35)

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• Ultimate age-dating method for galaxy groups; clues from the Millennium Simulations
• Fossil groups origins II. Unveiling the formation of the brightest group galaxies through their scaling relations
• Hierarchical Structure Formation and Modes of Star Formation in Hickson Compact Group 31
• Properties of fossil groups in cosmological simulations and galaxy formation models
• The Impact of Environment on the Stellar Mass - Halo Mass Relation
• Age and metallicity gradients in fossil ellipticals
• An optical and X-ray study of the fossil group RX J1340.6+4018
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• Fossil groups in the Millennium simulation. From the brightest to the faintest galaxies during the past 8 Gyr
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• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): 'No Smoking' zone for giant elliptical galaxies?
• A finer view of the conditional galaxy luminosity function and magnitude-gap statistics
• Fossil Groups in the Millennium Simulation: Their environment and its evolution
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• Investigating the cores of fossil systems with Chandra
• Fresh Activity in Old Systems: Radio AGN in Fossil Groups of Galaxies
• Merger history of central galaxies in Semi-Analytic Models of galaxy formation
• A Normal Abundance of Faint Satellites in the Fossil Group NGC 6482
• Compact groups from semi-analytical models of galaxy formation -- II: Different assembly channels
• Disturbed Fossil Group Galaxy NGC 1132
• Characterizing the nature of Fossil Groups with XMM
• Revisiting the fossil group candidates UGC 842 and NGC 6034
• Fossil group origins: VIII RXJ075243.6+455653 a transitionary fossil group
• Spatially resolved stellar population parameters in the BCGs of two fossil groups
• Chandra Studies of the X-ray Gas Properties of Fossil Systems
• The lens SW05 J143454.4+522850: a fossil group at redshift 0.6?