A Virgo Environmental Survey Tracing Ionised Gas Emission (VESTIGE)

XIII. The role of ram-pressure stripping in transforming the diffuse and ultra-diffuse galaxies in the Virgo cluster^⋆

¹ Aix Marseille Univ., CNRS, CNES, LAM, Marseille, France
e-mail: samuel.boissier@lam.fr, alessandro.boselli@lam.fr
² National Centre for Nuclear Research, Pasteura 7, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: junais@ncbj.gov.pl
³ National Research Council of Canada, Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria, BC V9E 2E7, Canada
⁴ Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Republic of Korea
⁵ Department of Astronomy, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China
⁶ Kavli Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China
⁷ AIM, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Observatoire de Paris, PSL University, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica G. Occhialini, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 3, 20126 Milano, Italy
⁹ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera, Via Brera 28, 20121 Milano, Italy
¹⁰ Department of Astrophysics, University of Vienna, Türkenschanzstrasse 17, 1180 Vienna, Austria
¹¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800, USA
¹² Centro de Astronomá (CITEVA), Universidad de Antofagasta, Avenida Angamos 601, Antofagasta, Chile

Received: 10 June 2022
Accepted: 29 July 2022

Abstract

Context. Low-surface-brightness galaxies (LSBs) contribute to a significant fraction of all the galaxies in the Universe. Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) form a subclass of LSBs that has attracted a lot of attention in recent years (although its definition may vary between studies). Although UDGs are found in large numbers in galaxy clusters, groups, and in the field, their formation and evolution are still very much debated.

Aims. Using a comprehensive set of multiwavelength data from the NGVS (optical), VESTIGE (Hα narrowband), and GUViCS (UV) surveys, we studied a sample of 64 diffuse galaxies and UDGs in the Virgo cluster to investigate their formation history.

Methods. We analyzed the photometric colors and surface-brightness profiles of these galaxies and then compared them to models of galaxy evolution, including ram-pressure stripping (RPS) events to infer any possible strong interactions with the hot cluster gas in the past.

Results. While our sample consists mainly of red LSBs, which is typical in cluster environments, we found evidence of a color variation with the cluster-centric distance. Blue, H I-bearing, star-forming diffuse galaxies are found at larger distances from the cluster center than the rest of the sample. The comparison of our models with multifrequency observations suggests that most of the galaxies of the sample might have undergone a strong RPS event in their lifetime, on average 1.6 Gyr ago (with a large dispersion, and RPS still ongoing for some of them). This process resulted in the transformation of initially gas-rich diffuse blue galaxies into gas-poor and red ones that form the dominant population now, the more extreme UDGs having undergone the process in a more distant past on average.

Conclusions. The RPS in dense environments could be one of the major mechanisms for the formation of the large number of quiescent UDGs we observe in galaxy clusters.