Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Intra-Cluster Light: Their Mass Distribution in the Innermost Regions of Groups and Clusters

Abstract

We improve the model presented in Contini & Gu 2020 that describes the radial mass distribution of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) and the diffuse component also known as intra-cluster light (ICL), by assuming that the global BCG+ICL radial mass distribution follows the sum of three profiles: a Jaffe and an exponential profiles for the bulge and disk of the BCG, respectively, and a modified version of an NFW profile for the ICL. We take advantage of a wide sample of BCG+ICL systems simulated with our state-of-art semi-analytic model to: (a) investigate the reliability of our BCG+ICL distribution by looking at several scaling relations between the BCG+ICL stellar mass within different apertures and the total BCG+ICL/halo mass, at different redshift; (b) make a prediction of the distance where the radial distribution transitions from BCG to ICL dominated. We find that our model nicely reproduces all the observed scaling relations investigated at the present time with a compelling degree of precision, but slightly biased-low with respect to observations at higher redshifts ($z\gtrsim 0.5$). The transition radius predicted by our model is in good agreement with recent observational results, and spans a range between $\sim 15$ kpc and $\sim 100$ kpc. It mostly depends on the morphology of the BCG, whether it is bulge or disk dominated, on the amount of ICL with respect to the bulge and/or disk, and on the dynamical state of the group/cluster.

14 pages, 8 figures. Minor corrections after proof, accepted on ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Reaching for the Edge I: Probing the Outskirts of Massive Galaxies with HSC, DECaLS, SDSS, and Dragonfly
• Characterising the intra-cluster light in The Three Hundred simulations
• The Transition Region between Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Intra-Cluster Light in Galaxy Groups and Clusters
• Intracluster light in the core of z~2 galaxy proto-clusters
• How to Interpret Measurements of Diffuse Light in Stacked Observations of Groups and Clusters of Galaxies
• Machine Learning to identify ICL and BCG in simulated galaxy clusters
• Dust in Clusters of Galaxies
• Dark Energy Survey Year 6 Results: Intra-Cluster Light from Redshift 0.2 to 0.5
• The intragroup light in KiDS+GAMA groups: A stacking analysis
• Predicting Halo Formation Time Using Machine Learning