Intracluster light in the core of z~2 galaxy proto-clusters

Abstract

Intracluster light is thought to originate from stars that were ripped away from their parent galaxies by gravitational tides and galaxy interactions during the build up of the cluster. The stars from such interactions will accumulate over time, so semi-analytic models suggest that the abundance of intracluster stars is negligible in young proto-clusters at z~2 and grows to around a quarter of the stellar mass in the oldest, most mature clusters. In contrast to these theoretical expectations, we report on the detection of intracluster light within two proto-clusters at z=2 using deep HST images. We use the colour of the intracluster light to estimate its mass-to-light ratio in annuli around the brightest cluster galaxies (BCG), up to a radius of 100 kpc. We find that $54\pm 5$% and $71\pm 3$% of the stellar mass in these regions is located more than 10 kpc away from the BCGs in the two proto-clusters. This low concentration is similar to BCGs in lower redshift clusters, and distinct from other massive proto-cluster galaxies. This suggests that intracluster stars are already present within the core 100 kpc of proto-clusters. We compare these observations to the Hydrangea hydrodynamical galaxy cluster simulations and find that intracluster stars are predicted to be a generic feature of group-sized halos at z=2. These intracluster stars will gradually move further away from the BCG as the proto-cluster assembles into a cluster.

arXiv comment14 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (47)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• A Universal Density Profile from Hierarchical Clustering
• Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
• The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling I: The relevance of uncertain aspects of stellar evolution and the IMF to the derived physical properties of galaxies
• EAZY: A Fast, Public Photometric Redshift Code
• The hierarchical formation of the brightest cluster galaxies
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling III: model calibration, comparison, and evaluation
• Chandra Cluster Cosmology Project III: Cosmological Parameter Constraints
• An ultra-deep near-infrared spectrum of a compact quiescent galaxy at z=2.2
• The Evolution of the Stellar Mass Functions of Star-Forming and Quiescent Galaxies to z = 4 from the COSMOS/UltraVISTA Survey
• The merger rate of galaxies in the Illustris Simulation: a comparison with observations and semi-empirical models
• The Major and Minor Galaxy Merger Rates at z < 1.5
• Galaxy Clusters around radio-loud AGN at 1.3 < z < 3.2 as seen by Spitzer
• The Hydrangea simulations: galaxy formation in and around massive clusters
• What are Protoclusters? -- Defining High Redshift Galaxy Clusters and Protoclusters
• On the formation and physical properties of the Intra-Cluster Light in hierarchical galaxy formation models
• The Formation and Evolution of Intracluster Light
• Early assembly of the most massive galaxies
• THELI -- Convenient reduction of any optical, near- and mid-infrared imaging data
• Intracluster light: a luminous tracer for dark matter in clusters of galaxies
• The evolution of the brightest cluster galaxies since z~1 from the ESO Distant Cluster Survey (EDisCS)
• Co-evolution of BCGs and ICL using CLASH
• Dark Energy Survey Year 1 results: Detection of Intra-cluster Light at Redshift $\sim$ 0.25
• A Medium-Resolution Near-Infrared Spectral Library of Late Type Stars: I
• The Galaxy Cluster Mid-Infrared Luminosity Function at 1.3<z<3.2
• Measurement of the intracluster light at z ~ 1
• Disruption of satellite galaxies in simulated groups and clusters: the roles of accretion time, baryons, and pre-processing
• The intra-cluster light as a tracer of the total matter density distribution: a view from simulations
• $HST$ Grism Confirmation of $16$ Structures at $1.4<z<2.8$ from the Clusters Around Radio-Loud AGN (CARLA) Survey
• Distant galaxy clusters in the XMM Large Scale Structure survey
• The XXL Survey: XVII. X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Properties of the Redshift 2.0 Galaxy Cluster XLSSC 122
• The Growth of Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Intracluster Light Over the Past Ten Billion Years
• Diffuse UV light associated with the Spiderweb Galaxy: evidence for in-situ star formation outside galaxies
• Spectroscopic confirmation of a mature galaxy cluster at redshift two
• The rate of Type-Ia supernovae in galaxy clusters and the delay-time distribution out to redshift 1.75
• Euclid preparation: XVI. Exploring the ultra low-surface brightness Universe with Euclid/VIS
• Intracluster light is already abundant at redshift beyond unity
• HST Grism Confirmation of Two $z\sim 2$ Structures from the Clusters Around Radio-Loud AGN (CARLA) Survey
• Evidence for the existence of abundant intracluster light at z= 1.24
• The formation history of massive cluster galaxies as revealed by CARLA
• The Observed Evolution of the Stellar Mass - Halo Mass Relation for Brightest Central Galaxies
• On the Mass Distribution of the Intra-Cluster Light in Galaxy Groups and Clusters
• Physical properties of Brightest Cluster Galaxies up to redshift 1.80 based on HST data
• Quiescent galaxies in a virialized cluster at redshift 2: Evidence for accelerated size-growth
• Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Intra-Cluster Light: Their Mass Distribution in the Innermost Regions of Groups and Clusters

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Characterising the intra-cluster light in The Three Hundred simulations
• Mock Observations: Formation and Evolution of diffuse light in Galaxy Groups and Clusters in the IllustrisTNG Simulations
• Euclid preparation LXX. Forecasting detection limits for intracluster light in the Euclid Wide Survey
• The intragroup light in KiDS+GAMA groups: A stacking analysis
• The origin of the intra-cluster light in The Three Hundred simulations