Statistical Properties of the IntraCluster Light from SDSS Image Stacking

TL;DR

This study uses SDSS image stacking of 683 galaxy clusters to analyze the properties of intracluster light, revealing its distribution, origin, and relation to brightest cluster galaxies with high accuracy.

Contribution

It provides detailed measurements of ICL surface brightness, fraction, and color, linking ICL formation to galaxy interactions and BCG growth, with a large sample and image stacking approach.

Findings

ICL surface brightness declines from 26 to 32 mag/arcsec^2 with radius.

Diffuse light fraction decreases from ~50% to <5% at larger distances.

ICL accounts for about 10% of total optical emission within 500 kpc.

Abstract

The presence of a diffuse stellar component in galaxy clusters has been established by a number of observational works in recent years. In this contribution I summarize our results (Zibetti et al. 2005) obtained by stacking SDSS images of 683 clusters, selected with the maxBCG algorithm at 0.2< z <0.3. Thanks to our large sample and the advantages of image stacking applied to SDSS images, we are able to measure the systematic properties of the intracluster light (ICL) with very high accuracy. We find that the average surface brightness of the ICL ranges between 26 and 32 mag/arcsec^2, and constantly declines from 70 kpc cluster-centric distance (i.e. distance from the BCG) to 700 kpc. The fraction of diffuse light over the total light (including galaxies), monotonically declines from ~50 to <~5% over the same range of distances, thus showing that the ICL is more easily produced close to the bottom of a cluster's potential well. Clusters lacking a bright BCG hardly build up a large amount of intracluster stellar component. The link between the growth of the BCG and the ICL is also suggested by the strong degree of alignment between these two components which is observed in clusters where the BCG displays a significant elongation. With the additional fact that the colors of the ICL are consistent with those of galaxies, all this appears to be evidence for IC stars being stripped from galaxies that suffer very strong tidal interactions in the center of clusters and eventually merge into the BCG. Our measurements also show that IC stars are a minor component of a cluster's baryonic budget, representing only ~10% of the total optical emission within 500 kpc. Finally, we discuss some open issues that emerge from a comparison of the present results with other observations and recent theoretical modeling.