The Fate of Dwarf Galaxies in Clusters and the Origin of Intracluster Stars. II. Cosmological Simulations

TL;DR

This study uses cosmological simulations to explore the formation and evolution of intracluster light, highlighting the dominant role of galaxy mergers and tidal destruction in shaping galaxy clusters.

Contribution

It introduces a combined simulation approach integrating galaxy formation, mergers, and tidal effects within a cosmological volume, providing new insights into intracluster light origins.

Findings

Galaxy mergers dominate galaxy destruction over tides by tenfold.

Tidal destruction accounts for observed intracluster light fractions.

Most intracluster light originates from intermediate-mass galaxies tidally destroyed.

Abstract

We combine a N-body simulation algorithm with a subgrid treatment of galaxy formation, mergers, and tidal destruction, and an observed conditional luminosity function Phi(L|M), to study the origin and evolution of galactic and extragalactic light inside a cosmological volume of size (100 Mpc)^3, in a concordance LCDM model. This algorithm simulates the growth of large-scale structures and the formation of clusters, the evolution of the galaxy population in clusters, the destruction of galaxies by mergers and tides, and the evolution of the intracluster light. We find that destruction of galaxies by mergers dominates over destruction by tides by about an order of magnitude at all redshifts. However, tidal destruction is sufficient to produce intracluster light fractions f_ICL that are sufficiently high to match observations. The bulk of the intracluster light (60%) is provided by intermediate galaxies of total masses 10^11 Msun-10^12 Msun and stellar masses 6x10^8 Msun-3x10^10 Msun that were tidally destroyed by even more massive galaxies. The contribution of low-mass galaxies to the intracluster light is small and the contribution of dwarf galaxies is negligible, even though, by numbers, most galaxies that are tidally destroyed are dwarfs. Tracking clusters back in time, we find that their values of f_ICL tend to increase over time, but can experience sudden changes that are sometimes non-monotonic. These changes occur during major mergers involving clusters of comparable masses but very different intracluster luminosities. Most of the tidal destruction events take place in the central regions of clusters. As a result, the intracluster light is more centrally concentrated than the galactic light. Our results support tidal destruction of intermediate-mass galaxies as a plausible scenario for the origin of the intracluster light.