On the origin of tidal features in cluster galaxies

Although galaxy mergers are thought to play an important role in forming elliptical galaxies, mergers in galaxy clusters have drawn less attention compared to mergers in field environments because galaxies with high peculiar velocities are unlikely to merge with each other. However, comparable fractions of merger features in cluster galaxies have been reported from deep imaging of Abell clusters, suggesting the relevance of mergers in the transformation of cluster early-type galaxies (Sheen et al. 2012). As a more direct approach to understanding the origin of tidal features in clusters, we perform hydrodynamic re-simulations on a cluster of galaxies. Based on mock observation images of the simulated cluster galaxies, we construct and analyze the cluster early-type galaxy sample in a consistent manner with Sheen et al. 2012. We find that the fraction of tidal feature from the simulated cluster is comparable to that of the observation. Evolutionary history of the galaxies with merger features shows that most of the mergers responsible for the merger features in the present originate from outside the cluster more than 2Gyrs ago. We also find that many of the galaxies with tidal features show correlations with subgroups in the cluster. All these results suggest that merger features in the cluster are due to preprocessing before accretion into the cluster.