Dwarf Galaxies and Cluster Environments

Abstract

We report an investigation of the properties of dwarf galaxies (Mr < -15) inside 26 clusters at z = 0.15 – 0.25, using the X-ray data from the Chandra archive, and optical images taken with Subaru Suprime-Cam. Our results include: 1. Investigation of the dwarf galaxy density distribution is sensitive to the background galaxies and the choice of colour selection of galaxies. 2. Cluster-centric dwarf-to-giant ratio is highly sensitive to the level of subtracted background galaxies. 3. A certain fraction of faint galaxies always remain undetected by the detection algorithm near the center of clusters, even after carefully treating the halo or extra diffuse light created by bright galaxies. The number of ‘undetected’ faint galaxies varies significantly from cluster to cluster, and even from pointing to pointing. 4. Dwarf galaxies extend up to 2 Mpc from the center in most clusters. Meanwhile, the distribution of blue dwarf galaxies extends more to the outside. 5. For a given colour, the spatial distributions of dwarf galaxies and giant galaxies become similar. Namely, the most of the radial distribution comes from the colour, rather than the size, of galaxies. 6. Relative to the NFW profile, all of the galaxy populations are showing a deficit near the cluster core (r < 0.3 Mpc). 7. The dwarf-to-giant ratio shows no variation against cluster measures such as the richness and X-ray luminosity, as well as various cluster X-ray characteristics related to possible dynamical status of clusters.