Brightest Cluster Galaxies and Intracluster Light: Their Mass Distribution in the Innermost Regions of Groups and Clusters

Abstract

Abstract We improve the model presented in Contini & Gu that describes the radial mass distribution of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) and the diffuse component also known as intracluster light (ICL), by assuming that the global BCG+ICL radial mass distribution follows the sum of three profiles: Jaffe and exponential profiles for the bulge and disk of the BCG, respectively, and a modified version of an NFW profile for the ICL. We take advantage of a wide sample of BCG+ICL systems simulated with our state-of-the-art semianalytic model to (a) investigate the reliability of our BCG+ICL distribution by looking at several scaling relations between the BCG+ICL stellar mass within different apertures and the total BCG+ICL/halo mass, at different redshifts; (b) make a prediction of the distance where the radial distribution transitions from BCG to ICL dominated. We find that our model nicely reproduces all the observed scaling relations investigated at the present time with a compelling degree of precision, but slightly biased low with respect to observations at higher redshifts (z ≳ 0.5). The transition radius predicted by our model is in good agreement with recent observational results, and spans a range between ∼15 kpc and ∼100 kpc. It mostly depends on the morphology of the BCG, whether it is bulge or disk dominated, on the amount of ICL with respect to the bulge and/or disk, and on the dynamical state of the group/cluster.