The Next Generation Fornax Survey (NGFS): II. The Central Dwarf Galaxy Population

Abstract

We present a photometric study of the dwarf galaxy population in the core region ($<r_{\mathrm{vir}}/4$) of the Fornax galaxy cluster based on deep $u^{\prime }{g}^{\prime }{i}^{\prime }$ photometry from the Next Generation Fornax Cluster Survey. All imaging data were obtained with the Dark Energy Camera mounted on the 4-meter Blanco telescope at the Cerro-Tololo Interamerican Observatory. We identify 258 dwarf galaxy candidates with luminosities $-17<M_{g^{\prime }}<-8$ mag, corresponding to typical stellar masses of $9.5\gtrsim \log {\mathcal{M}}_{\star }/M_{\odot }\gtrsim 5.5$, reaching $\sim 3$ mag deeper in point-source luminosity and $\sim 4$ mag deeper in surface-brightness sensitivity compared to the classic Fornax Cluster Catalog. Morphological analysis shows that surface-brightness profiles are well represented by single-component Sérsic models with average Sérsic indices of $⟨n{⟩}_{u^{\prime },g^{\prime },i^{\prime }}=(0.78-0.83)\pm 0.02$, and average effective radii of $⟨r_e{⟩}_{u^{\prime },g^{\prime },i^{\prime }}=(0.67-0.70)\pm 0.02$ kpc. Color-magnitude relations indicate a flattening of the galaxy red sequence at faint galaxy luminosities, similar to the one recently discovered in the Virgo cluster. A comparison with population synthesis models and the galaxy mass-metallicity relation reveals that the average faint dwarf galaxy is likely older than ~5 Gyr. We study galaxy scaling relations between stellar mass, effective radius, and stellar mass surface density over a stellar mass range covering six orders of magnitude. We find that over the sampled stellar mass range several distinct mechanisms of galaxy mass assembly can be identified: i) dwarf galaxies assemble mass inside the half-mass radius up to $\log {\mathcal{M}}_{\star }$ ~8.0, ii) isometric mass assembly in the range $8.0<\log {\mathcal{M}}_{\star }/M_{\odot }<10.5$, and iii) massive galaxies assemble stellar mass predominantly in their halos at $\log {\mathcal{M}}_{\star }$ ~10.5 and above.

19 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

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