Bibcode
                                    
                            Montes, M.; Trujillo, I.
    Bibliographical reference
                                    Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 482, Issue 2, p.2838-2851
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                        1
            
                        2019
            
  Citations
                                    116
                            Refereed citations
                                    102
                            Description
                                    The bulk of stars in galaxy clusters are confined within their
constituent galaxies. Those stars do not trace the extended distribution
of dark matter well as they are located in the central regions of the
cluster's dark matter subhaloes. A small fraction of stars is expected,
however, to follow the global dark matter shape of the cluster. These
are the stars whose extended spatial distribution results from the
merging activity of galaxies and form the intracluster light (ICL). In
this work, we compare the bi-dimensional distribution of dark matter in
massive galaxy clusters (as traced by gravitational lensing models) with
the distribution of the ICL. To do that, we use the superb data from the
Hubble Frontier Fields Initiative. Using the Modified Hausdorff distance
(MHD) as a way of quantifying the similarities between the mass and ICL
distributions, we find an excellent agreement (MHD ˜ 25 kpc)
between the two components. This result shows that the ICL exquisitely
follows the global dark matter distribution, providing an accurate
luminous tracer of dark matter. This finding opens up the possibility of
exploring the distribution of dark matter in galaxy clusters in detail
using only deep imaging observations.
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