Understanding the formation history of brightest cluster galaxies is an important topic in galaxy formation. Utilizing the Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich cluster catalog, and applying the Ansatz that the most massive halos at one redshift remain among the
most massive ones at a slightly later cosmic epoch, we have constructed cluster samples at redshift z~0.4 and z~0.2 that can be statistically regarded as progenitor-descendant pairs. This allows us to study the stellar mass assembly history of BCGs in these massive clusters at late times, finding the degree of growth between the two epochs is likely at only few percent level, which is far lower compared to the prediction from a state-of-the-art semi-analytic galaxy formation model.
We study the relationship between two major baryonic components in galaxy clusters, namely the stars in galaxies, and the ionized gas in the intracluster medium (ICM), using 94 clusters that span the redshift range 0-0.6. Accurately measured total an
d ICM masses from Chandra observations, and stellar masses derived from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Two-Micron All-Sky Survey allow us to trace the evolution of cluster baryon content in a self-consistent fashion. We find that, within r_{500}, the evolution of the ICM mass--total mass relation is consistent with the expectation of self-similar model, while there is no evidence for redshift evolution in the stellar mass--total mass relation. This suggests that the stellar mass and ICM mass in the inner parts of clusters evolve differently.
A novel statistic is proposed to examine the hypothesis that all cluster galaxies are drawn from the same luminosity distribution (LD). In such a statistical model of galaxy LD, the brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) are simply the statistical extreme
of the galaxy population. Using a large sample of nearby clusters, we show that BCGs in high luminosity clusters (e.g., L_tot > 4x10^11 L_sun) are unlikely (probability <3x10^-4) to be drawn from the LD defined by all red cluster galaxies more luminous than M_r=-20. On the other hand, BCGs in less luminous clusters are consistent with being the statistical extreme. Applying our method to the second brightest galaxies, we show that they are consistent with being the statistical extreme, which implies that the BCGs are also distinct from non-BCG luminous, red, cluster galaxies. We point out some issues with the interpretation of the classical tests proposed by Tremaine & Richstone (1977) that are designed to examine the statistical nature of BCGs, investigate the robustness of both our statistical test and those of TR against difficulties in photometry of galaxies of large angular size, and discuss the implication of our findings on surveys that use the luminous red galaxies to measure the baryon acoustic oscillation features in the galaxy power spectrum.
To explore the high frequency radio spectra of galaxies in clusters, we used NRAOs Very Large Array at four frequencies, 4.9-43 GHz, to observe 139 galaxies in low redshift (z<0.25), X-ray detected, clusters. The clusters were selected from the surve
y conducted by Ledlow & Owen, who provided redshifts and 1.4 GHz flux densities for all the radio sources. We find that more than half of the observed sources have steep microwave spectra as generally expected (alpha<-0.5, in the convention S propto nu^alpha). However, 60-70% of the unresolved or barely resolved sources have flat or inverted spectra. Most of these show an upward turn in flux at nu>22 GHz, implying a higher flux than would be expected from an extrapolation of the lower frequency flux measurements. Our results quantify the need for careful source subtraction in increasingly sensitive measurements of the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect in clusters of galaxies (as currently being conducted by, for instance, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and South Pole Telescope groups).
