WALLABY Pilot Survey: The Diversity of Ram Pressure Stripping of the Galactic H i Gas in the Hydra Cluster

Abstract

Abstract This study uses H i image data from the Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY (WALLABY) pilot survey with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, covering the Hydra cluster out to 2.5r 200. We present the projected phase–space distribution of H i-detected galaxies in Hydra, and identify that nearly two-thirds of the galaxies within 1.25 r 200 may be in the early stages of ram pressure stripping. More than half of these may be only weakly stripped, with the ratio of strippable H i (i.e., where the galactic restoring force is lower than the ram pressure in the disk) mass fraction (over total H i mass) distributed uniformly below 90%. Consequently, the H i mass is expected to decrease by only a few 0.1 dex after the currently strippable portion of H i in these systems has been stripped. A more detailed look at the subset of galaxies that are spatially resolved by WALLABY observations shows that, while it typically takes less than 200 Myr for ram pressure stripping to remove the currently strippable portion of H i, it may take more than 600 Myr to significantly change the total H i mass. Our results provide new clues to understanding the different rates of H i depletion and star formation quenching in cluster galaxies.