2021/07/08 by Emanuele Contini, Contini, Emanuele · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2107.04180
26 pages, 11 figures, published version uploaded
openalex publication_date 2021/07/08 · arxiv created 2021/11/09 · arxiv updated 2021/11/10 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Not all the light in galaxy groups and clusters comes from stars that are bound to galaxies. A significant fraction of it constitutes the so-called intracluster or diffuse light (ICL), a low surface brightness component of groups/clusters generally found in the surroundings of the brightest cluster galaxies and intermediate/massive satellites. In this review, I will describe the mechanisms responsible for its formation and evolution, considering the large contribution given to the topic in the last decades by both the theoretical and observational sides. Starting from the methods that are commonly used to isolate the ICL, I will address the remarkable problem given by its own definition, which still makes the comparisons among different studies not trivial, to conclude by giving an overview of the most recent works that take advantage of the ICL as a luminous tracer of the dark matter distribution in galaxy groups and clusters.