The MeerKAT Galaxy Clusters Legacy Survey: star formation in massive clusters at 0.15 < z < 0.35

Abstract

We investigate dust-unbiased star formation rates (SFR) as a function of the environment in 20 massive clusters ($M_{200}>4\times 10^{14}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$) between $0.15<z<0.35$ using radio luminosities ($L_{1.4GHz}$) from the recently released MeerKAT Galaxy Cluster Legacy Survey catalogue. We use optical data from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey to estimate photo-$z$s and assign cluster membership. We observe a steady decline in the fraction ($f_{\mathrm{SF}}$) of star-forming galaxies from $2R_{200}$ to the cluster centres in our full cluster sample, but notice a significant difference in $f_{\mathrm{SF}}$ gradients between clusters hosting large-scale extended radio emission in the form of haloes and relics (associated with ongoing merger activity) and non-radio-halo/relic hosting clusters. For star-forming galaxies within $R_{200}$, the $f_{\mathrm{SF}}$ in clusters hosting radio haloes and relics ($0.148\pm 0.016$) is $\approx 23\%$ higher than in non-radio-halo/relic hosting clusters ($0.120\pm 0.011$). We observe a $3\sigma$ difference between the total SFR normalised by cluster mass for non-radio-halo/relic hosting clusters ($21.5\pm 1.9$ M${}_{\odot }$yr${}^{-1}$/$10^{14}$M${}_{\odot }$) and for clusters with radio haloes and relics ($26.1\pm 1.4$ M${}_{\odot }$yr${}^{-1}$/$10^{14}$M${}_{\odot }$). There is a $\approx 4\times$ decline in the mass normalised total SFR of clusters for galaxies with SFR above the luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) SFR limit at our redshift slice, corresponding to 2 Gyr in look-back time. This is consistent with the rapid decline in SF activity with decreasing redshift amongst cluster LIRGs seen by previous studies using infrared-derived SFR.

13 pages, 9 figures. To be published in MNRAS

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