Merging histories of Galaxies in Deep and Wide Images of 7 Abell Clusters with Various Dynamical States

Galaxy mergers are known to have been one of the main drivers in galaxy evolution in a wide range of environments. However, in galaxy clusters, high-speed encounters have been believed to undermine the role of mergers as a driver in galaxy evolution. Nonetheless, a high fraction (~38% in Sheen et al. 2012 and ~20% in Oh et al. 2018) of galaxies with post-merging features have been reported in deep (>~28 mag/arcsec2) optical surveys of cluster galaxies. The authors argue that these galaxies could have merged outside of the cluster and, later, fallen into the cluster, sustaining their long-lasting post-merging features. On the other hand, when galaxy clusters interact, galaxy orbits might be destabilized resulting in a higher galaxy merger rate. To test this idea, we measure the ongoing-merger fraction of galaxies in deep DECam mosaic data of seven Abell clusters (A754, A2399, A2670, A3558, A3574, A3659 and A3716) with a variety of dynamical states (0.016