No Arabic abstract
We investigate the LF in the very relaxed cluster Abell 496. Our analysis is based on deep images obtained at CFHT with MegaPrime/MegaCam in four bands (ugri) covering a 1x1 deg2 region, which is centered on the cluster Abell 496 and extends to near its virial radius. The LFs are estimated by statistically subtracting a reference field taken as the mean of the 4 Deep fields of the CFHTLS survey. Background contamination is minimized by cutting out galaxies redder than the observed Red Sequence in the g-i versus i colour-magnitude diagram. In Abell 496, the global LFs show a faint-end slope alpha=-1.55+/-0.06 and vary little with observing band. Without colour cuts, the LFs are much noisier but not significantly steeper. The faint-end slopes show a statistically significant steepening from alpha=-1.4+/-0.1 in the central region (extending to half a virial radius) to -1.8+/-0.1 in the Southern envelope of the cluster. Cosmic variance and uncertain star-galaxy separation are our main limiting factors in measuring the faint-end of the LFs. The large-scale environment of Abell 496, probed with the fairly complete 6dFGS catalogue, shows a statistically significant 36 Mpc long filament at PA=137 deg, but we do not find an enhanced LF along this axis. Our LFs do not display the large number of dwarf galaxies (alpha ~ -2) inferred by several authors, whose analyses may suffer from field contamination caused by inexistent or inadequate colour cuts. Alternatively, different clusters may have different faint-end slopes, but this is hard to reconcile with the wide range of slopes found for given clusters and for wide sets of clusters.
Clusters of galaxies are believed to be at the intersections of cosmological filaments and to grow by accreting matter from these filaments. Such continuous infall has major consequences not only on clusters but also on the physics of cluster galaxies. Faint galaxies are particularly interesting as they are very sensitive to environmental effects, and may have a different behaviour from that of bright galaxies. The aim of this paper is to sample the Coma cluster building history, based on the analysis of galaxy luminosity functions and red sequences in the Color Magnitude Relation down to faint magnitudes, which are privileged tools for this purpose. The present analysis is based on deep (R~24), wide (~0.5 deg2) multiband (BVRI Vega system) images of the Coma cluster obtained with the CFH12K camera at the CFHT. We have derived LFs and CMRs in twenty 10x10 arcmin2 regions and in larger regions. In all photometric bands, we found steeply rising LFs in the north-northeast half of the cluster (due to early type galaxies at bright magnitudes and due to late type galaxies at the faint end), and much flatter LFs in the south-southwest region. Although the fine behaviour of the CMR RS is different in these two regions, a good agreement is found in general between the RS computed for faint and for bright galaxies. All these results can be interpreted consistently in the framework of the building up process previously proposed. The Northern Coma area is a relatively quiescent region while the southern area experiences several infalls.
We present the results from a survey of 57 low-redshift Abell galaxy clusters to study the radial dependence of the luminosity function (LF). The dynamical radius of each cluster, r200, was estimated from the photometric measurement of cluster richness, Bgc. The shape of the LFs are found to correlate with radius such that the faint-end slope, alpha, is generally steeper on the cluster outskirts. The sum of two Schechter functions provides a more adequate fit to the composite LFs than a single Schechter function. LFs based on the selection of red and blue galaxies are bimodal in appearance. The red LFs are generally flat for -22 < M_Rc < -18, with a radius-dependent steepening of alpha for M_Rc > -18. The blue LFs contain a larger contribution from faint galaxies than the red LFs. The blue LFs have a rising faint-end component (alpha ~ -1.7) for M_Rc > -21, with a weaker dependence on radius than the red LFs. The dispersion of M* was determined to be 0.31 mag, which is comparable to the median measurement uncertainty of 0.38 mag. This suggests that the bright-end of the LF is universal in shape at the 0.3 mag level. We find that M* is not correlated with cluster richness when using a common dynamical radius. Also, we find that M* is weakly correlated with BM-type such that later BM-type clusters have a brighter M*. A correlation between M* and radius was found for the red and blue galaxies such that M* fades towards the cluster center.
We present the GALEX NUV (2310 A) and FUV (1530 A) galaxy luminosity functions of the nearby cluster of galaxies A1367 in the magnitude range -20.3< M_AB < -13.3. The luminosity functions are consistent with previous (~ 2 mag shallower) estimates based on the FOCA and FAUST experiments, but display a steeper faint-end slope than the GALEX luminosity function for local field galaxies. Using spectro-photometric optical data we select out star-forming systems from quiescent galaxies and study their separate contributions to the cluster luminosity function. We find that the UV luminosity function of cluster star-forming galaxies is consistent with the field. The difference between the cluster and field LF is entirely due to the contribution at low luminosities (M_AB >-16 mag) of non star-forming, early-type galaxies that are significantly over dense in clusters.
AIMS: We have compiled one of the largest normal-galaxy samples ever to probe X-ray luminosity function evolution separately for early and late-type systems. METHODS: We selected 207 normal galaxies up to redshift z~1.4, with data from four major Chandra X-ray surveys, namely the Chandra deep fields (north, south and extended) and XBootes, and a combination of X-ray and optical criteria. We used template spectral energy-distribution fitting to obtain separate early- and late-type sub-samples, made up of 101 and 106 systems, respectively. For the full sample, as well as the two sub-samples, we obtained luminosity functions using both a non-parametric and a parametric, maximum-likelihood method. RESULTS: For the full sample, the non-parametric method strongly suggests luminosity evolution with redshift. The maximum-likelihood estimate shows that this evolution follows ~(1+z)^k_total, k_total=2.2+-0.3. For the late-type sub-sample, we obtained k_late=2.4^+1.0_-2.0. We detected no significant evolution in the early-type sub-sample. The distributions of early and late-type systems with redshift show that late types dominate at z>~0.5 and hence drive the observed evolution for the total sample. CONCLUSIONS: Our results support previous results in X-ray and other wavebands, which suggests luminosity evolution with k=2-3.
We present the analysis of the luminosity function of a large sample of galaxy clusters from the Northern Sky Optical Cluster Survey, using latest data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our global luminosity function (down to M_r<= -16) does not show the presence of an upturn at faint magnitudes, while we do observe a strong dependence of its shape on both richness and cluster-centric radius, with a brightening of M^* and an increase of the dwarf to giant ratio with richness, indicating that more massive systems are more efficient in creating/retaining a population of dwarf satellites. This is observed both within physical (0.5 R_200) and fixed (0.5 Mpc) apertures, suggesting that the trend is either due to a global effect, operating at all scales, or to a local one but operating on even smaller scales. We further observe a decrease of the relative number of dwarf galaxies towards the cluster center; this is most probably due to tidal collisions or collisional disruption of the dwarfs since merging processes are inhibited by the high velocity dispersions in cluster cores and, furthermore, we do not observe a strong dependence of the bright end on the environment. We find indication that the dwarf to giant ratio decreases with increasing redshift, within 0.07<z<0.2. We also measure a trend for stronger suppression of faint galaxies (below M^*+2) with increasing redshift in poor systems, with respect to more massive ones, indicating that the evolutionary stage of less massive galaxies depends more critically on the environment. Finally we point out that the luminosity function is far from universal; hence the uncertainties introduced by the different methods used to build a composite function may partially explain the variety of faint-end slopes reported in the literature as well as, in some cases, the presence of a faint-end upturn.