Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ram pressure stripping in high-density environments

  • Review Article
  • Published:
The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review Aims and scope

Abstract

Galaxies living in rich environments are suffering different perturbations able to drastically affect their evolution. Among these, ram pressure stripping, i.e. the pressure exerted by the hot and dense intracluster medium (ICM) on galaxies moving at high velocity within the cluster gravitational potential well, is a key process able to remove their interstellar medium (ISM) and quench their activity of star formation. This review is aimed at describing this physical mechanism in different environments, from rich clusters of galaxies to loose and compact groups. We summarise the effects of this perturbing process on the baryonic components of galaxies, from the different gas phases (cold atomic and molecular, ionised, hot) to magnetic fields and cosmic rays, and describe their induced effects on the different stellar populations, with a particular attention to its role in the quenching episode generally observed in high-density environments. We also discuss on the possible fate of the stripped material once removed from the perturbed galaxies and mixed with the ICM, and we try to estimate its contribution to the pollution of the surrounding environment. Finally, combining the results of local and high-redshift observations with the prediction of tuned models and simulations, we try to quantify the importance of this process on the evolution of galaxies of different mass, from dwarfs to giants, in various environments and at different epochs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Ram pressure of the ICM comes from ions in the ICM (mainly protons), while the contribution from electrons is tiny (similar to the ICM viscosity). On the other hand, the thermal pressure of the ICM has roughly the equal contribution from free electrons and ions.

  2. The ram pressure Mira experiences only \(\sim 1.3 \times 10^{-11}\) dyn (assuming H i gas), which is only typical for the RP experienced by cluster galaxies at the cluster outskirts. Thus, an AGB star like Mira soaring in the ICM with a velocity of \(\sim \) 2000 km s\(^{-1}\) can have a tail of \(\sim \) 0.06 kpc.

  3. Different definitions of the virial radius were used in different works, e.g. \(r_{200}\), \(r_{180}\) and \(r_{101}\) (see, e.g. Bryan and Norman 1998 for detail).

  4. Note that many recent cluster works adopted the ICM density profile first proposed by Vikhlinin et al. (2006) (their equation 3). However, unlike the model proposed by Patej and Loeb (2015), this model is not physically motivated. Nevertheless, the best fit is also given here: \(E(z)^{-2} n_{\mathrm{e}} (x) = 0.00472 \Big (0.0818(\frac{x}{0.0735})^{-0.769} [1+(\frac{x}{0.0735})^{2}]^{-0.897} [1+(\frac{x}{0.280})^{3}]^{-0.570}\Big )^{1/2}\), good for \(x = 0.02 - 1.1\). Note that the central component of the Vikhlinin et al. (2006) model is not included as the density profile does not include the very central core.

  5. We did not use Eq. 13 in the following equations as we want to keep the mass dependency and Eq. 13 is not correct for real clusters.

  6. We recall that in such a configuration \(R_{\mathrm{0,star}} = 0.32\, R_{25}\), the effective radius (radius including half of the total galaxy luminosity), \(R_{\mathrm{eff}} = 0.59\, R_{25}\), and \(R_{\mathrm{0,gas}} = 0.61\, R_{25}\).

  7. As specified in Sect. 3.2.3, there are indications that clumpy structures such as giant molecular clouds decouple from the ram pressure wind.

  8. Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities are due to the velocity difference across the interface between two fluids (e.g. Livio et al. 1980; Nulsen 1982; Mori and Burkert 2000). They manifest as small scales waves and vortexes as those observed in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities are due to the pressure of a light fluid pushing a heavy fluid, forming small-scale spikes and bubbles at their interface (e.g. Roediger and Brüggen 2008).

  9. For example, the radiative cooling time is 1.3–7.2 Gyr for several tail regions in NGC 4552’s X-ray tail beyond the galaxy, with the X-ray gas properties derived by Kraft et al. (2017).

  10. Different recipes for gas-to-dust ratio vs. metallicity relation are given in this reference.

  11. Diffuse filaments in the FUV and NUV bands must be interpreted with care since the UV emission could be originating from hydrogen 2-photon continuum or resonant lines of CIV and MgII generated by shocks rather than from stellar continuum emission (e.g. Bracco et al. 2020).

  12. The case of Mira indicates that the external pressure can perturb the wind produced by the mass loss of evolved stars as AGB stars (e.g. Li et al. 2019a). In general, stellar winds are subject to ram pressure.

  13. The H ideficiency parameter, first defined by Haynes and Giovanelli (1984), is a measure of the logarithmic difference between the expected and the observed H i mass of galaxies of different morphological type and size, where the estimated measure is taken from standard scaling relations of unperturbed galaxies in the field. For an updated calibration of these relations, see Boselli and Gavazzi (2009).

  14. Infall of the H i gas located in the outer regions to the inner disc has been invoked to explain the observed strong correlation between the total gas content (H i plus H\(_2\)) of isolated late-type galaxies, a large fraction of which is located outside the stellar disc, and their overall star formation activity (Boselli et al. 2001). The supply of this gas component to the inner star-forming regions, however, would occur on timescales relatively long compared to the typical ones for gas stripping (see Sect. 4.2).

  15. Note that the classical evaporation is assumed here. If instead saturated evaporation (Cowie and Songaila 1977) is assumed, the evaporation timescale typically increases by a factor of a few. On the other hand, galactic clouds are clumpy so the actual contact surface between the hot ICM and the cold clouds can be much larger than the surface of a single spherical cloud, which will reduce the evaporation timescale, along with the likely turbulence around the mixing layers.

References

Download references

Acknowledgements

We warmly thank the two anonymous referees for their accurate reading of the text and for their constructive comments and suggestions which helped improving the completeness and clarity of the manuscript. We warmly thank S. Boissier, G. Consolandi, G. Gavazzi, A. Longobardi, A. Pedrini, P. Serra, S. Tonnesen, M. Yagi for constructive discussions and for giving us access to different set of multifrequency data and for their help in the preparation of some figures presented along the text. We also thank C. Ge and S. Laudari on the help on several figures. AB acknowledges financial support from “Programme National de Cosmologie and Galaxies” (PNCG) funded by CNRS/INSU-IN2P3-INP, CEA and CNES, France. MF acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) (grant agreement No 757535). MS acknowledges support provided by the SAO grants GO6-17111X and GO0-21118X, the NSF grant 1714764 and the USRA grant 09-0221. Part of the results presented in this work have been gathered or collected from archival datasets by the VESTIGE survey team. We thus warmly thank all members of this collaboration in allowing us to use and reproduce some of their work and results obtained during this project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, CNES, LAM, 13013, Marseille, France

    Alessandro Boselli

  2. Universitá di Milano-Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 3, 20100, Milan, Italy

    Matteo Fossati

  3. INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, via Brera 28, 20121, Milan, Italy

    Matteo Fossati

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama in Huntsville, 301 Sparkman Drive, Huntsville, AL, 35899, USA

    Ming Sun

Authors
  1. Alessandro Boselli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Matteo Fossati
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ming Sun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alessandro Boselli.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Appendix: Table of galaxies suffering RPS in nearby clusters

Appendix: Table of galaxies suffering RPS in nearby clusters

Table 2 shows the properties of galaxies suffering RPS in the nearby clusters Virgo, Coma, Norma and A1367. The description of the columns is as follows:

Column 1: galaxy name.

Column 2: morphological type: in order of priority: NED, GoldMine (Gavazzi et al. 2003a).

Column 3: nuclear classification, in order of priority from MUSE IFS or SDSS fibre spectra and published in Gavazzi et al. (2011, 2013a, 2018a).

Column 4: stellar masses are derived using the calibration of Zibetti et al. (2009) for a Chabrier (2003) IMF using the i and g-band magnitudes taken in order of priority from Cortese et al. (2012), Gavazzi et al., in preparation, or for a few objects from dedicated observations. The assumed distance of each object is that given in Table 1, with the exception of the Virgo cluster for which distances are taken as those of the different subgroups to which each galaxy belongs (see Gavazzi et al. 1999).

Column 5: undergoing perturbation: RP = ram pressure, M = merging, H = harassment. When multiple perturbing mechanisms are at place, the first one reported has been identified as the dominant.

Column 6: projected distance from the X-rays centre of the cluster, in units of \(r_{200}\). For the Virgo cluster, this is the distance from M87 even for those objects probably belonging to other cluster substructures.

Column 7: heliocentric velocities from targeted observations (see column 12), GoldMine Gavazzi et al. (2003a) or NED.

Column 8: electron density of the ICM at the projected distance of the cluster from the X-rays centre of the cluster, derived from Fig. 1, in units of \(10^{-4}\, \mathrm{cm}^{-3}\)

Column 9: HI-deficiency parameter, taken in order of preference from Boselli et al. (2014a), GoldMine (Gavazzi et al. 2003a), or from the dedicated references given in column 10.

Column 10: references to dedicated works on each single object, as follows. References for Virgo: AB11: Abramson et al. (2011), AB14: Abramson and Kenney (2014), AB16: Abramson et al. (2016), AB12: Arrigoni Battaia et al. (2012) B05: Boselli et al. (2005), B06a: Boselli et al. (2006), B16: Boselli et al. (2016a), B16a: Boselli et al. (2016b), B18a: Boselli et al. (2018b), B18b: Boselli et al. (2018a), B21a: Boselli et al. (2021), B21b: Boselli et al. in preparation, CH07: Chung et al. (2007), CH09: Chung et al. (2009a), CO06: Cortés et al. (2006), CR20: Cramer et al. (2020), C05: Crowl et al. (2005), CK08: Crowl and Kenney (2008), DB08: Duc and Bournaud (2008), F11: Fumagalli et al. (2011), F18: Fossati et al. (2018), HA07: Haynes et al. (2007), HE10: Hester et al. (2010), K04: Kenney et al. (2004), K14: Kenney et al. (2014), J13: Jáchym et al. (2013), L20: Longobardi et al. (2020b), P10: Pappalardo et al. (2010), SO17: Sorgho et al. (2017), V: VESTIGE survey private comm., VE99: Veilleux et al. (1999), V99: Vollmer et al. (1999), V03: Vollmer (2003), V03a: Vollmer and Huchtmeier (2003), V04a: Vollmer et al. (2004a), V05: Vollmer et al. (2005b), V05a: Vollmer et al. (2005a), V06: Vollmer et al. (2006), V08: Vollmer et al. (2008a), V08a: Vollmer et al. (2008b), V09: Vollmer et al. (2009), V18: Vollmer et al. (2018), V21: Vollmer et al. (2021), YO02: Yoshida et al. (2002), YO04: Yoshida et al. (2004) References for Norma: F16: Fossati et al. (2016), FU14: Fumagalli et al. (2014), LA22: Laudari et al. (2022), J14: Jáchym et al. (2014), J19: Jáchym et al. (2019), SU06: Sun et al. (2006), SU07: Sun et al. (2007a), SU10: Sun et al. (2010), ZH13: Zhang et al. (2013) References for Coma: BD86: Bothun and Dressler (1986), CH20: Chen et al. (2020), CR19: Cramer et al. (2019), CR21: Cramer et al. (2021). F12: Fossati et al. (2012), G89: Gavazzi (1989),G18: Gavazzi et al. (2018b), K15: Kenney et al. (2015), V01a: Vollmer et al. (2001a), Y10: Yagi et al. (2010) References for A1367: B94: Boselli et al. (1994), C17: Consolandi et al. (2017), CO06: Cortese et al. (2006), F19: Fossati et al. (2019), P22: Pedrini et al. (2022), G78: Gavazzi (1978), G84: Gavazzi et al. (1984), G87: Gavazzi and Jaffe (1987), G89: Gavazzi (1989), G01a: Gavazzi et al. (2001a), G01b: Gavazzi et al. (2001b), G03: Gavazzi et al. (2003b), G17: Gavazzi et al. (2017), N82: Nulsen (1982), Q00: Quilis et al. (2000), RO21: Roberts et al. (2021a), S10: Scott et al. (2010), S12: Scott et al. (2012), S13: Scott et al. (2013), S15: Scott et al. (2015), S18: Scott et al. (2018), S22: Scott et al. (2022), Y17: Yagi et al. (2017).

Table 2 Galaxies suffering RPS in nearby clusters
Full size table

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Boselli, A., Fossati, M. & Sun, M. Ram pressure stripping in high-density environments. Astron Astrophys Rev 30, 3 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00159-022-00140-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00159-022-00140-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation