Minor Mergers Are Not Enough: The Importance of Major Mergers during Brightest Cluster Galaxy Assembly

Abstract We investigate the roles of major and minor mergers during brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) assembly using surface brightness profiles, line indices, and fundamental plane relations. Based on our own sample and consistently reanalyzed Sloan Digital Sky Survey data, we find that BCGs and luminous normal ellipticals (LNEs) have similar central velocity dispersions, central absorption line strengths, and central surface brightnesses. However, BCGs are more luminous due to their much larger radial extent. These properties result in a flattening of the Faber–Jackson and Mg b –luminosity relations above 10 10.6 <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>L</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>⊙</mml:mo> <mml:mo>,</mml:mo> <mml:mi>g</mml:mi> <mml:mo accent="false">′</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:msub> </mml:math> . We use this effect to estimate an amount of 60%–80% of accreted and merged light in BCGs relative to LNEs, which agrees with results from cosmological simulations. We determine the contribution of this excess light (EL) at each radius from the difference between the surface flux profiles of BCGs and LNEs. It is small in the center but increases steeply to 50% at ∼3 kpc radius. The shape of these profiles suggests that BCGs could be formed from LNEs in three major merger processes. This is also consistent with the mild increase of the Sérsic indices from n ≈ 4 to n ≈ 6, as confirmed in merger simulations. We note that minor mergers cannot be the dominant origin of the BCG’s EL because they deposit too few stars at intermediate radii r ≲ 20 kpc. The shape of the EL profile also explains a detected offset of 0.14 dex of the fundamental planes for BCGs and LNEs relative to each other.

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