Authors: Marc S. Seigar, Alister W. Graham, Helmut Jerjen
Abstract: We have analysed deep R-band images, down to a limiting surface brightness of 26.5 R-mag arcsec-2 (equivalent to ~28 B-mag arcsec-2), of 5 cD galaxies to determine the shape of the surface brightness profiles of their extended stellar envelopes. Both de Vaucouleurs' R1/4 model and Sersic's R1/n model, on their own, provide a poor description of the surface brightness profiles of cD galaxies. This is due to the presence of their outer stellar envelope, thought to have accumulated over the merger history of the central cluster galaxy and also from the tidal stripping of galaxies at larger cluster radii. We therefore simultaneously fit two Sersic functions to measure the shape of the inner and outer components of the cD galaxies. We show that, for 3 out of our 5 galaxies, the surface brightness profiles are best fit by an inner Sersic model, with indices n~1-6, and an outer exponential component. The galaxy-to-envelope size ratio for these three systems is 0.1-0.4 and the contribution of the stellar envelope to the total R-band light (i.e. galaxy + envelope) is around 60 to 80 per cent. The exceptions are NGC 6173, for which our surface brightness profile modelling is consistent with just a single component (i.e. no envelope) and NGC 4874, which has an envelope with a de Vaucouleurs, rather than exponential, profile. We therefore tentatively conclude that there is no unique surface brightness profile which fits the envelopes of cD galaxies