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arXiv · 1305.5254

The Stellar Mass Growth of Brightest Cluster Galaxies in the IRAC Shallow Cluster Survey

Yen-Ting Lin·Mark Brodwin·Anthony H. Gonzalez·Paul Bode·Peter R. M. Eisenhardt·S. A. Stanford·Alexey Vikhlinin
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Abstract

The details of the stellar mass assembly of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) remain an unresolved problem in galaxy formation. We have developed a novel approach that allows us to construct a sample of clusters that form an evolutionary sequence, and have applied it to the Spitzer IRAC Shallow Cluster Survey (ISCS) to examine the evolution of BCGs in progenitors of present-day clusters with mass of (2.5-4.5)x10^{14}Msun. We follow the cluster mass growth history extracted from a high resolution cosmological simulation, and then use an empirical method that infers the cluster mass based on the ranking of cluster luminosity to select high-z clusters of appropriate mass from ISCS to be progenitors of the given set of z=0 clusters. We find that, between z=1.5 and 0.5, the BCGs have grown in stellar mass by a factor of 2.3, which is well-matched by the predictions from a state-of-the-art semi-analytic model. Below z=0.5 we see hints of differences in behavior between the model and observation.

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Yen-Ting Lin, Mark Brodwin, Anthony H. Gonzalez, Paul Bode, Peter R. M. Eisenhardt, S. A. Stanford, Alexey Vikhlinin. 2013-05-22. The Stellar Mass Growth of Brightest Cluster Galaxies in the IRAC Shallow Cluster Survey. https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637x%2F771%2F1%2F61

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