Search

Galaxy clusters grow by accreting galaxies from the field and along filaments of the cosmic web. As galaxies are accreted they are affected by their local environment before they enter (pre-processing), and traverse the cluster potential. Observations that aim to constrain pre-processing are challenging to interpret because filaments comprise a heterogeneous range of environments including groups of galaxies embedded within them and backsplash galaxies that contain a record of their previous passage through the cluster. This motivates using modern cosmological simulations to dissect the population of galaxies found in filaments that are feeding clusters, to better understand their history, and aid the interpretation of observations. We use zoom-in simulations from TheThreeHundred project to track halos through time and identify their environment. We establish a benchmark for galaxies in cluster infall regions that supports the reconstruction of the different modes of pre-processing. We find that up to 45% of all galaxies fall into clusters via filaments (closer than 1 ?1 Mpc from the filament spine). 12% of these filament galaxies are long-established members of groups and between 30 and 60% of filament galaxies at 200 are backsplash galaxies. This number depends on the cluster's dynamical state and sharply drops with distance. Backsplash galaxies return to clusters after deflecting widely from their entry trajectory, especially in relaxed clusters. They do not have a preferential location with respect to filaments and cannot collapse to form filaments. The remaining pristine galaxies (?30-60%) are environmentally effected by cosmic filaments alone.

We use THETHREEHUNDRED project, a suite of 324 resimulated massive galaxy clusters embedded in a broad range of environments, to investigate (i) how the gas content of the surrounding haloes correlates with the phase-space position at z z = 0 and (ii) the role that ram pressure plays in this correlation. By stacking all 324 normalized phase-space planes containing 169?287 haloes and subhaloes, we show that the halo gas content is tightly correlated with the phase-space position. At ?1.5--2R 200 ?1.5--2R200 of the cluster dark matter halo, we find an extremely steep decline in the halo gas content of infalling haloes and subhaloes irrespective of cluster mass, possibly indicating the presence of an accretion shock. We also find that subhaloes are particularly gas-poor, even in the cluster outskirts, which could indicate active regions of ongoing pre-processing. By modelling the instantaneous ram pressure experienced by each halo and subhalo at z z = 0, we show that the ram pressure intensity is also well correlated with the phase-space position, which is again irrespective of cluster mass. In fact, we show that regions in the phase-space plane with high differential velocity between a halo or subhalo and its local gas environment are almost mutually exclusive with high halo gas content regions. This suggests a causal link between the gas content of objects and the instantaneous ram pressure they experience, where the dominant factor is the differential velocity.

We present the results of a systematic search and characterisation of galaxies with morphological signatures of ram-pressure stripping, known as jellyfish galaxies, in the multi-cluster system A901/2, at z ? 0.165, as part of the OMEGA survey. By visual inspecting ACS/HST F606W images looking for morphological signatures of ram-pressure stripping events in H?-emitting galaxies, we identify a total of 70 jellyfish candidates. Out of these, 53 are clearly star-forming galaxies and 5 are highly probable AGN hosts, the classification of the remaining galaxies is more uncertain. They have late-type and irregular morphologies and most of them are part of the blue cloud with only 4 being previously classified as dusty reds. The AGN activity is not prominent in the sample and, of the few cases of galaxies hosting AGN, such activity does not seem to be correlated to the gas stripping phenomenon. Our jellyfish galaxy candidates do not have a preferential pattern of motion within the multi-cluster system, although the most compelling cases appear to inhabit the inner regions of the most massive sub-cluster centres. The specific star-formation rate of these galaxies indicates that their star formation activity is enhanced, in contrast with what is observed for the rest of the star-forming galaxy population in the system. Half of the sample is forming stars at a higher rate than the main-sequence for field galaxies and this behaviour is more evident for the most compelling candidates. For some galaxies, the spatially resolved H? emission appears to be as disturbed and extended as their continuum counterparts. Our findings point towards a scenario where the ram pressure stripping is triggering a period of intense and extended star formation throughout the galaxy while it is also disturbing the morphology. This is the largest sample of jellyfish galaxy candidates found in a single system suggesting that cluster mergers might be the ideal environment for studying ram pressure stripping effects.

We conduct a comprehensive projected phase-space analysis of the A901/2 multicluster system at z ∼ 0.165. Aggregating redshifts from spectroscopy, tunable-filter imaging and prism techniques, we assemble a sample of 856 cluster galaxies reaching 108.5 M⊙ in stellar mass. We look for variations in cluster galaxy properties between virialized and non-virialized regions of projected phase space (PPS). Our main conclusions point to relatively gentle environmental effects, expressed mainly on galaxy gas reservoirs. (1) Stacking the four subclusters in A901/2, we find galaxies in the virialized region are more massive, redder and have marginally higher Sérsic indices, but their half-light radii and Hubble types are not significantly different. (2) After accounting for trends in stellar mass, there is a remaining change in rest-frame colour across PPS. Primarily, the colour difference is due to the absence in the virialized region of galaxies with rest frame B − V < 0.7 and moderate-to-high (M⋆ > 109.85 M⊙) stellar mass. (3) There is an infalling population of lower mass (M⋆ ≤ 109.85 M⊙), relatively blue (B − V < 0.7) elliptical or spheroidal galaxies that are strikingly absent in the virialized region. (4) The number of bona fide star-forming and active galactic nucleus galaxies in the PPS regions is strongly dictated by stellar mass. However, there remains a reduced fraction of star-forming galaxies in the centres of the clusters at fixed stellar mass, consistent with the star formation–density relation in galaxy clusters. (5) There is no change in specific Hα-derived star formation rates of star-forming galaxies at fixed mass across the cluster environment. This suggests that pre-processing of galaxies during infall plays a prominent role in quenching star formation.

With the aim of understanding the effect of the environment on the star formation history and morphological transformation of galaxies, we present a detailed analysis of the colour, morphology and internal structure of cluster and field galaxies at 0.4?z?0.8. We use {\em HST} data for over 500 galaxies from the ESO Distant Cluster Survey (EDisCS) to quantify how the galaxies' light distribution deviate from symmetric smooth profiles. We visually inspect the galaxies' images to identify the likely causes for such deviations. We find that the residual flux fraction (RFF), which measures the fractional contribution to the galaxy light of the residuals left after subtracting a symmetric and smooth model, is very sensitive to the degree of structural disturbance but not the causes of such disturbance. On the other hand, the asymmetry of these residuals (Ares) is more sensitive to the causes of the disturbance, with merging galaxies having the highest values of Ares. Using these quantitative parameters we find that, at a fixed morphology, cluster and field galaxies show statistically similar degrees of disturbance. However, there is a higher fraction of symmetric and passive spirals in the cluster than in the field. These galaxies have smoother light distributions than their star-forming counterparts. We also find that while almost all field and cluster S0s appear undisturbed, there is a relatively small population of star-forming S0s in clusters but not in the field. These findings are consistent with relatively gentle environmental processes acting on galaxies infalling onto clusters.

We present a study of the star formation and AGN activity for galaxies in CP 15051 the Abell 901/2 multicluster system at z ? 0.167 as part of the OSIRIS Mapping of Emission-line Galaxies in A901/2 (OMEGA) survey. Using Tuneable Filter data obtained with the OSIRIS instrument at the Gran Telescopio Canarias, we produce spectra covering the H? and [NII] spectral lines for more than 400 galaxies. Using optical emission-line diagnostics, we identify a significant number of galaxies hosting AGN, which tend to have high masses and a broad range of morphologies. Moreover, within the environmental densities probed by our study, we find no environmental dependence on the fraction of galaxies hosting AGN. The analysis of the integrated H? emission shows that the specific star formation rates of a majority of the cluster galaxies are below the field values for a given stellar mass. We interpret this result as evidence for a slow decrease in the star formation activity of star-forming galaxies as they fall into higher density regions, contrary to some previous studies that suggested a rapid truncation of star formation. We find that most of the intermediate- and high-mass spiral galaxies go through a phase in which their star formation is suppressed but still retain significant star formation activity. During this phase, these galaxies tend to retain their spiral morphology while their colours become redder. The presence of this type of galaxies in high-density regions indicates that the physical mechanism responsible for suppressing star formation affects mainly the gas component of the galaxies, suggesting that ram-pressure stripping or starvation is potentially responsible.

We examine the properties of the galaxies and dark matter haloes residing in the cluster infall region surrounding the simulated _ cold dark matter galaxy cluster studied by Elahi et al. at z = 0. The 1.1 × 1015 h−1M_ galaxy cluster has been simulated with eight different hydrodynamical codes containing a variety of hydrodynamic solvers and sub-grid schemes. All models completed a dark-matter-only, non-radiative and full-physics run from the same initial conditions. The simulations contain dark matter and gas with mass resolution mDM = 9.01 × 108 h−1M_ and mgas = 1.9 × 108 h−1M_, respectively. We find that the synthetic cluster is surrounded by clear filamentary structures that contain ∼60 per cent of haloes in the infall region with mass ∼1012.5–1014 h−1M_, including 2–3 group-sized haloes (>1013 h−1M_). However, we find that only ∼10 per cent of objects in the infall region are sub-haloes residing in haloes, which may suggest that there is not much ongoing pre-processing occurring in the infall region at z = 0. By examining the baryonic content contained within the haloes, we also show that the code-to-code scatter in stellar fraction across all halo masses is typically ∼2 orders of magnitude between the two most extreme cases, and this is predominantly due to the differences in sub-grid schemes and calibration procedures that each model uses. Models that do not include active galactic nucleus feedback typically produce too high stellar fractions compared to observations by at least ∼1 order of magnitude.

We study the links between star formation history and structure for a large mass-selected galaxy sample at 0.05 ≤ zphot ≤ 0.30. The galaxies inhabit a very broad range of environments, from cluster cores to the field. Using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images, we quantify their structure following Hoyos et al., and divide them into disturbed and undisturbed. We also visually identify mergers. Additionally, we provide a quantitative measure of the degree of disturbance for each galaxy (‘roughness’). The majority of elliptical and lenticular galaxies have relaxed structure, showing no signs of ongoing star formation. Structurally disturbed galaxies, which tend to avoid the lowest density regions, have higher star formation activity and younger stellar populations than undisturbed systems. Cluster spirals with reduced/quenched star formation have somewhat less disturbed morphologies than spirals with ‘normal’ star formation activity, suggesting that these ‘passive’ spirals have started their morphological transformation into S0s. Visually identified mergers and galaxies not identified as mergers but with similar roughness have similar specific star formation rates and stellar ages. The degree of enhanced star formation is thus linked to the degree of structural disturbance, regardless of whether it is caused by major mergers or not. This suggests that merging galaxies are not special in terms of their higher-than-normal star formation activity. Any physical process that produces ‘roughness’, or regions of enhanced luminosity density, will increase the star formation activity in a galaxy with similar efficiency. An alternative explanation is that star formation episodes increase the galaxies’ roughness similarly, regardless of whether they are merger induced or not.

We present an analysis of V-band radial surface brightness ?(r) profiles for S0 galaxies in different environments using Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys imaging and data from the Space Telescope A901/2 Galaxy Evolution Survey. Using a large sample of ?280 field and cluster S0s, we find that in both environments, ?25 per cent have a pure exponential disc (type I) and ?50 per cent exhibit an up-bending disc break (antitruncation, type III). However, we find hardly any (