Brightest Cluster Galaxies at the Present Epoch

We have observed 433 z<=0.08 brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in a full-sky survey of Abell clusters. The BCG Hubble diagram is consistent to within 2% of a Omega_m=0.3, Lambda=0.7 Hubble relation. The L_m-alpha relation for BCGs, which uses alpha, the log-slope of the BCG photometric curve of growth, to predict metric luminosity, L_m, has 0.27 mag residuals. We measure central stellar velocity dispersions, sigma, of the BCGs, finding the Faber-Jackson relation to flatten as the metric aperture grows to include an increasing fraction of the total BCG luminosity. A 3-parameter "metric plane" relation using alpha and sigma together gives the best prediction of L_m, with 0.21 mag residuals. The projected spatial offset, r_x, of BCGs from the X-ray-defined cluster center is a gamma=-2.33 power-law over 1<r_x<10^3 kpc. The median offset is ~10 kpc, but ~15% of the BCGs have r_x>100 kpc. The absolute cluster-dispersion normalized BCG peculiar velocity |Delta V_1|/sigma_c follows an exponential distribution with scale length 0.39+/-0.03. Both L_m and alpha increase with sigma_c. The alpha parameter is further moderated by both the spatial and velocity offset from the cluster center, with larger alpha correlated with the proximity of the BCG to the cluster mean velocity or potential center. At the same time, position in the cluster has little effect on L_m. The luminosity difference between the BCG and second-ranked galaxy, M2, increases as the peculiar velocity of the BCG within the cluster decreases. Further, when M2 is a close luminosity "rival" of the BCG, the galaxy that is closest to either the velocity or X-ray center of the cluster is most likely to have the larger alpha. We conclude that the inner portions of the BCGs are formed outside the cluster, but interactions in the heart of the galaxy cluster grow and extend the envelopes of the BCGs.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

Stellar mass loss, rotation and the chemical enrichment of early-type galaxies

We present a comparison between the [Ca,C,N/Fe]-mass relations observed in local spheroids and the results of a chemical evolution model which already successfully reproduces the [Mg/Fe]-mass and the [Fe/H]-mass relations in these systems. We find that the [Ca/Fe]-mass relation is naturally explained by such a model without any additional assumption. In particular, the observed underabundance of Ca with respect to Mg can be attributed to the different contributions from Type Ia and Type II supernovae to the nucleosynthesis of these two elements. For C and N, we consider new stellar yields that take into account stellar mass loss and rotation. These yields have been shown to successfully reproduce the C and N abundances in Milky Way metal-poor stars. The use of these new stellar yields produces a good agreement between the chemical evolution model predictions and the integrated stellar population observations for C. In the case of N, the inclusion of fast rotators and stellar mass-loss nucleosynthesis prescriptions improves our predictions for the slope of the [N/Fe] versus σ relation, but a zero-point discrepancy of 0.3 dex remains. This discrepancy cannot be removed, either by increasing the N yields or by assuming a larger amount of fast rotators in spheroids, because in both cases this leads to an overproduction of the N abundances in the gas phase in these galaxies at high redshift (e.g. the Lyman break galaxy MS 1512−cB58). This work demonstrates that current stellar yields are unable to simultaneously reproduce the large mean stellar [〈N/Fe〉] ratios inferred from integrated spectra of elliptical galaxies in Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the low N abundance measured in the gas of high-redshift spheroids from absorption lines. However, since chemical evolution models for the Milky Way computed with the Geneva stellar yields constitute at present the only way to account for the N/O, C/O and 12C/13C abundance ratios observed in very metal-poor halo stars, it seems reasonable to suggest that there may be uncertainties in either the inferred stellar or gas-phase N abundances at the level of ∼0.3 de