Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Intra-Cluster Light: Their Mass Distribution in the Innermost Regions of Groups and Clusters

TL;DR

This paper refines a model for the radial mass distribution of brightest cluster galaxies and intra-cluster light, validating it against simulations and observations, and predicting the transition radius between BCG and ICL dominance.

Contribution

It introduces an improved model combining three profiles for BCG+ICL distribution and tests its accuracy using state-of-the-art simulations and observational data.

Findings

Model reproduces observed scaling relations with high precision.

Transition radius between BCG and ICL ranges from 15 to 100 kpc.

Transition radius depends on BCG morphology and cluster dynamics.

Abstract

We improve the model presented in Contini & Gu 2020 that describes the radial mass distribution of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) and the diffuse component also known as intra-cluster light (ICL), by assuming that the global BCG+ICL radial mass distribution follows the sum of three profiles: a Jaffe and an exponential profiles for the bulge and disk of the BCG, respectively, and a modified version of an NFW profile for the ICL. We take advantage of a wide sample of BCG+ICL systems simulated with our state-of-art semi-analytic model to: (a) investigate the reliability of our BCG+ICL distribution by looking at several scaling relations between the BCG+ICL stellar mass within different apertures and the total BCG+ICL/halo mass, at different redshift; (b) make a prediction of the distance where the radial distribution transitions from BCG to ICL dominated. We find that our model nicely reproduces all the observed scaling relations investigated at the present time with a compelling degree of precision, but slightly biased-low with respect to observations at higher redshifts ($z\gtrsim 0.5$). The transition radius predicted by our model is in good agreement with recent observational results, and spans a range between $\sim 15$ kpc and $\sim 100$ kpc. It mostly depends on the morphology of the BCG, whether it is bulge or disk dominated, on the amount of ICL with respect to the bulge and/or disk, and on the dynamical state of the group/cluster.