Cluster Galaxy Dynamics and the Effects of Large Scale Environment

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution simulations to explore how large-scale structures influence galaxy cluster dynamics, revealing anisotropic velocity dispersions and the importance of viewing angle in detecting substructures.

Contribution

It demonstrates the impact of large-scale environment on cluster velocity dispersions and substructure detection, highlighting anisotropy and orientation effects.

Findings

Velocity dispersions vary significantly with viewing angle.

Subhalo groups retain identity for long periods within hosts.

Substructure detection is highly viewing angle dependent.

Abstract

We use a high-resolution N-body simulation to study how the influence of large-scale structure in and around clusters causes correlated signals in different physical probes and discuss some implications this has for multi-physics probes of clusters. We pay particular attention to velocity dispersions, matching galaxies to subhalos which are explicitly tracked in the simulation. We find that not only do halos persist as subhalos when they fall into a larger host, groups of subhalos retain their identity for long periods within larger host halos. The highly anisotropic nature of infall into massive clusters, and their triaxiality, translates into an anisotropic velocity ellipsoid: line-of-sight galaxy velocity dispersions for any individual halo show large variance depending on viewing angle. The orientation of the velocity ellipsoid is correlated with the large-scale structure, and thus velocity outliers correlate with outliers caused by projection in other probes. We quantify this orientation uncertainty and give illustrative examples. Such a large variance suggests that velocity dispersion estimators will work better in an ensemble sense than for any individual cluster, which may inform strategies for obtaining redshifts of cluster members. We similarly find that the ability of substructure indicators to find kinematic substructures is highly viewing angle dependent. While groups of subhalos which merge with a larger host halo can retain their identity for many Gyr, they are only sporadically picked up by substructure indicators. (Abridged)