ISM truncation due to ram pressure stripping: Comparisons of Theoretical Predictions and Observations

It has been proposed by Gunn & Gott (1972) that galaxies may lose their interstellar gas by ram pressure due to the dense intra-cluster medium while falling to the cluster potential. The observational evidence for this process, which is known as ram pressure stripping, is increasing, and it is believed to be one of the key environmental effects that can dramatically change the star formation activity of galaxies and hence their evolution. Intriguingly however, some cases with clear signs of ram pressure stripping are found in the environment which betrays our expectations (e.g. large clustercentric distances), and our understandings to the detailed working principle behind ram pressure stripping seem to be still lacking. As one of the ways to gain more theoretical insights into the conditions for ram pressure stripping process, we have been comparing the gas truncation radius which is predicted based on the simple Gunn & Gott's prescription with what is actually observed in a sample of carefully selected Virgo galaxies. In this work, we present the results of our comparisons between the theoretically predicted truncation radius and the observationally measured truncation radius for individual galaxies in the sample and discuss which additional conditions are needed in order to fully understand the observations.