A GMOS/IFU Study of Enhanced Star Formation Activity of Jellyfish Galaxies in Massive Galaxy Clusters

Ram-pressure stripping (RPS) is known as a typical mechanism of quenching star formation (SF) of galaxies orbiting in clusters, but it can also boost the SF activity within a short period of time. Jellyfish galaxies, with eye-catching blue tails and knots, are such starburst galaxies undergoing strong RPS in galaxy clusters. Thus, they are very useful targets to understand their SF activity in relation to RPS. We study the SF activity of three jellyfish galaxies in massive clusters at z=0.3-0.4 (MACSJ1752-JFG2, MACSJ0916-JFG1, and A2744-F0083) with Gemini GMOS/IFU and compare our results to those of jellyfish galaxies in low-mass clusters. We obtain total star formation rates (SFRs) of up to 60 Mo/yr and SFRs in the tails of up to 15 Mo/yr, which are much higher than those of jellyfish galaxies in low-mass clusters with the median SFRs of 1.1 Mo/yr in total and 0.03 Mo/yr in tails. In addition, these SFRs are also significantly higher than the SF main sequence of galaxies at the redshifts of the three jellyfish galaxies. This implies that their SF activity is much more enhanced compared to jellyfish galaxies in low-mass clusters due to extreme RPS in massive clusters.