XV Reunión de la Sociedad Española de Astronomía
Published August 15, 2022 | Version v2
Poster Open

On the Growth of Diffuse Light from Simulations of Galaxy Clusters

Creators

  • 1. Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC)
  • 2. Institut de Ciències del Cosmos (ICCUB), Universitat de Barcelona

Description

Deep surface photometry reveals the presence in a good number of galaxy clusters, as well as in their
smaller counterparts, galaxy groups, of an extended, diffuse luminous component that fills the space
between galaxies. This intracluster light (ICL) is believed to originate from the disruption of the outermost
regions of the galaxies that make up these systems.
Our aim in this work is to make use of controlled numerical simulations of pre-virialized clusters to study
the formation of the diffuse ICL, and investigate its potential to describe the assembly history of such
systems of galaxies.
We are currently using our simulations to track the growth of the ICL over cosmic time, tracing its
evolution across clusters spanning a range of masses and galaxy memberships. Here, we present our
first results, where we analyzed the relationship of ICL formation with the mass and size of the brightest
galaxy in the cluster and its dependence on both the merger fraction and the efficiency of interactions.

Notes

We acknowledge financial support from the Spanish state agency PID2019–106027GB–C43. MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 has also provided additional support through the Centre of Excellence Severo Ochoa's award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía under contract SEV–2017–0709 and the Centre of Excellence María de Maeztu's award for the Institut de Ciències del Cosmos at the Universitat de Barcelona under contract CEX2019–000918–M. BBW acknowledges financial support by the PRE2020-093715 grant from the SEV–2017–0709 project.

Files

Betelehem_poster.pdf

Files (363.6 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:0567316ef00dd86bcb6ea30f37892158
363.6 kB Preview Download