Radio continuum tails in ram pressure-stripped spiral galaxies: experimenting with a semi-empirical model in Abell 2255

Abstract

Wide-field radio continuum observations of galaxy clusters are revealing an increasing number of spiral galaxies hosting tens of kpc-long radio tails produced by the nonthermal interstellar medium being displaced by the ram pressure. We present a semi-empirical model for the multi-frequency radio continuum emission from ram pressure stripped tails based on the pure synchrotron cooling of a radio plasma moving along the stripping direction with a uniform velocity. We combine LOFAR and uGMRT observations at 144 and 400 MHz to study the flux density and spectral index profiles of the radio tails of 7 galaxies in Abell 2255, and use the model to reproduce the flux density and spectral index profiles, and infer the stripped radio plasma velocity. For 5 out of 7 galaxies we observe monotonic decrease in both flux density and spectral index up to $30$ kpc from their stellar disk. Our model reproduces the observed trends with a radio plasma bulk projected velocity between 160 and 430 km s${}^{-1}$. This result represents the first indirect measure of the stripped, nonthermal interstellar medium velocity. The observed spectral index trends indicate that the synchrotron cooling is faster than the adiabatic expansion losses, thus suggesting that the stripped radio plasma can survive for a few tens of Myr outside of the stellar disk. This provides a lower limit for the lifetime of the stripped ISM outside of the disk. As a proof of concept, we use the best-fit velocities to constrain the galaxies' 3D velocity in the cluster to be in the 300-1300 km s${}^{-1}$. We estimate the ram pressure affecting these galaxies to be between 0.1 and 2.9 $\times 10^{-11}$ erg cm${}^{-3}$, and measure the inclination between their stellar disk and the ram pressure wind.

15 pages, 9 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication on A&A on May 31st 2023

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