Is diffuse intracluster light a good tracer of the galaxy cluster matter distribution?
Abstract
We explore the relation between diffuse intracluster light (central galaxy included) and the galaxy cluster (baryonic and dark) matter distribution using a sample of 528 clusters at found in the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Year 1 data. The surface brightness of the diffuse light shows an increasing dependence on cluster total mass at larger radius, and appears to be self-similar with a universal radial dependence after scaling by cluster radius. We also compare the diffuse light radial profiles to the cluster (baryonic and dark) matter distribution measured through weak lensing and find them to be comparable. The IllustrisTNG galaxy formation simulation, TNG300, offers further insight into the connection between diffuse stellar mass and cluster matter distributions -- the simulation radial profile of the diffuse stellar component does not have a similar slope with the total cluster matter content, although that of the cluster satellite galaxies does. Regardless of the radial trends, the amount of diffuse stellar mass has a low-scatter scaling relation with cluster's total mass in the simulation, out-performing the total stellar mass of cluster satellite galaxies. We conclude that there is no consistent evidence yet on whether or not diffuse light is a faithful radial tracer of the cluster matter distribution. Nevertheless, both observational and simulation results reveal that diffuse light is an excellent indicator of the cluster's total mass.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2005.12275,
title = {Is diffuse intracluster light a good tracer of the galaxy cluster matter distribution?},
author = {H. Sampaio-Santos and Y. Zhang and R. L. C. Ogando and T. Shin and Jesse B. Golden-Marx and B. Yanny and K. Herner and M. Hilton and A. Choi and M. Gatti and D. Gruen and B. Hoyle and M. M. Rau and J. De Vicente and J. Zuntz and T. M. C. Abbott and M. Aguena and S. Allam and J. Annis and S. Avila and E. Bertin and D. Brooks and D. L. Burke and M. Carrasco Kind and J. Carretero and C. Chang and M. Costanzi and L. N. da Costa and H. T. Diehl and P. Doel and S. Everett and A. E. Evrard and B. Flaugher and P. Fosalba and J. Frieman and J. Garcia-Bellido and E. Gaztanaga and D. W. Gerdes and R. A. Gruendl and J. Gschwend and G. Gutierrez and S. R. Hinton and D. L. Hollowood and K. Honscheid and D. J. James and M. Jarvis and T. Jeltema and K. Kuehn and N. Kuropatkin and O. Lahav and M. A. G. Maia and M. March and J. L. Marshall and R. Miquel and A. Palmese and F. Paz-Chinchon and A. A. Plazas and E. Sanchez and B. Santiago and V. Scarpine and M. Schubnell and M. Smith and E. Suchyta and G. Tarle and D. L. Tucker and T. N. Varga and R. H. Wechsler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.12275},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
Accepted on MNRAS