Tracing the Total Stellar Mass and Star Formation of High-redshift Protoclusters

Abstract

As the progenitors of present-day galaxy clusters, protoclusters are excellent laboratories to study galaxy evolution. Since existing observations of protoclusters are limited to the detected constituent galaxies at UV and/or infrared wavelengths, the details of how typical galaxies grow in these young, pre-virialized structures remain uncertain. We measure the total stellar mass and star formation within protoclusters, including the contribution from faint undetected members by performing a stacking analysis of 211 z = 2-4 protoclusters selected as Planck cold sources. We stack Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and Herschel/SPIRE images to measure the angular size and the spectral energy distribution of the integrated light from the protoclusters. The fluxes of protoclusters selected as Planck cold sources can be contaminated by line-of-sight interlopers. Using the WebSky simulation, we estimate that a single protocluster contributes 33% ± 15% of the flux of a Planck cold source on average. After this correction, we obtain a total star formation rate of 7.3 ± 3.2 × 103 M ⊙yr−1 and a total stellar mass of 4.9 ± 2.2 × 1012 M ⊙. Our results indicate that protoclusters have, on average, 2× more star formation and 4× more stellar mass than the total contribution from individually detected galaxies in spectroscopically confirmed protoclusters. This suggests that much of the total flux within z = 2-4 protoclusters comes from galaxies with luminosities lower than the detection limit of SPIRE (L IR < 3 × 1012 L ⊙). Lastly, we find that protoclusters subtend a half-light radius of 2.′8 (4.2-5.8 cMpc), which is consistent with simulations. © 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.