Skip to main content
Article
Evidence for Significant Growth in the Stellar Mass of Brightest Cluster Galaxies over the Past 10 Billion Years
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2012)
  • C. Lidman
  • J. Suherli
  • A. Muzzin
  • Grant Wilson, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
  • R. Demarco
  • S. Brough
  • A. Rettura
  • J. Cox
  • A. DeGroot
  • H. K. C. Yee
  • D. Gilbank
  • H. Hoekstra
  • M. Balogh
  • E. Ellingson
  • A. Hicks
  • J. Nantais
  • A. Noble
  • M. Lacy
  • J. Surace
Abstract

Using new and published data, we construct a sample of 160 brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) spanning the redshift interval 0.03 < z < 1.63. We use this sample, which covers 70% of the history of the universe, to measure the growth in the stellar mass of BCGs after correcting for the correlation between the stellar mass of the BCG and the mass of the cluster in which it lives. We find that the stellar mass of BCGs increase by a factor of 1.8 between z=0.9 and z=0.2. Compared to earlier works, our result is closer to the predictions of semi-analytic models. However, BCGs at z=0.9, relative to BCGs at z=0.2, are still a factor of 1.5 more massive than the predictions of these models. Star formation rates in BCGs at z~1 are generally to low to result in significant amounts of mass. Instead, it is likely that most of the mass build up occurs through mainly dry mergers in which perhaps half of the mass is lost to the intra-cluster medium of the cluster.

Keywords
  • galaxies: clusters,
  • general - galaxies: evolution - galaxies: high-redshift,
  • cosmology: observations
Publication Date
2012
Publisher Statement
This paper was harvested from ArXiv.org and ArXiv identifier is arXiv:1208.5143
Citation Information
C. Lidman, J. Suherli, A. Muzzin, Grant Wilson, et al.. "Evidence for Significant Growth in the Stellar Mass of Brightest Cluster Galaxies over the Past 10 Billion Years" Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/grant_wilson/1/