The Impact of ICM Substructure on Ram Pressure Stripping

Abstract

Cluster galaxies moving through the intracluster medium (ICM) are expected to lose some of their interstellar medium (ISM) through ram pressure stripping and related ISM-ICM interactions. Using high-resolution cosmological simulations of a large galaxy cluster including star formation, we show that the ram pressure a galaxy experiences at a fixed distance from the cluster center can vary by well over an order of magnitude We find that this variation in ram pressure is due in almost equal parts to variation in the ICM density and in the relative velocity between the galaxy and the ICM. We also find that the ICM and galaxy velocities are weakly correlated for in-falling galaxies.