Structure and Color Gradients of Ultra-diffuse Galaxies in Distant Massive Galaxy Clusters

Abstract

We have measured structural parameters and radial color profiles of 108 ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs), carefully selected from six distant massive galaxy clusters in the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) in redshift range from 0.308 to 0.545. Our best-fitting GALFIT models show that the HFF UDGs have a median S\'ersic index of 1.09, which is close to 0.86 for local UDGs in the Coma cluster. The median axis-ratio value is 0.68 for HFF UDGs and 0.74 for Coma UDGs, respectively. The structural similarity between HFF and Coma UDGs suggests that they are the same kind of galaxies seen at different times and the structures of UDGs do not change at least for several billion years. By checking the distribution of HFF UDGs in the rest-frame $UVJ$ and $UVI$ diagrams, we find a large fraction of them are star-forming. Furthermore, a majority of HFF UDGs show small $\rm U-V$ color gradients within \,1\,*\,$R_{e,SMA}$ region, the fluctuation of the median radial color profile of HFF UDGs is smaller than 0.1\,mag, which is compatible to Coma UDGs. Our results indicate that cluster UDGs may fade or quench in a self-similar way, irrespective of the radial distance, in less than $\sim$ 4 Gyrs.