Too dense to go through: The role of low-mass clusters in the pre-processing of satellite galaxies

Abstract

We study the evolution of satellite galaxies in clusters of the C-EAGLE simulations, a suite of 30 high-resolution cosmological hydrodynamical zoom-in simulations based on the EAGLE code. We find that the majority of galaxies that are quenched at z = 0 (80 per cent ) reached this state in a dense environment (log 10 M 200 [M] ?13.5). At low redshift, regardless of the final cluster mass, galaxies appear to reach their quenching state in low-mass clusters. Moreo v er, galaxies quenched inside the cluster that they reside in at z = 0 are the dominant population in low-mass clusters, while galaxies quenched in a different halo dominate in the most massive clusters. When looking at clusters at z > 0.5, their in situ quenched population dominates at all cluster masses. This suggests that galaxies are quenched inside the first cluster they fall into. After galaxies cross the cluster's r 200 they rapidly become quenched (1 Gyr). Just a small fraction of galaxies (15 per cent ) is capable of retaining their gas for a longer period of time, but after 4 Gyr, almost all galaxies are quenched. This phenomenon is related to ram pressure stripping and is produced when the density of the intracluster medium reaches a threshold of ?ICM ?3 ×10 ?5 n H (cm ?3 ). These results suggest that galaxies start a rapid-quenching phase shortly after their first infall inside r 200 and that, by the time they reach r 500 , most of them are already quenched