I investigated the structural properties of old, metal-poor globular clusters formed at high redshifts (z > 6) and located inside and outside virialized galaxy-scale halos in clusters of galaxies with the total masses of M_CL based on high-resolution cosmological simulations with models of globular cluster formation. I mainly derived the parameter dependences of physical properties of intracluster globular clusters based on the results of more than 20 models.

I found that the projected radial density profiles (s_GC) of intracluster globular clusters in clusters with different M_CL can be diverse, though intracluster globular clusters have inhomogeneous, asymmetric, and somewhat elongated a distributions in most models. If s_GC(R) ~  R^a, a ranges from  -1.5  to  -2.5 for globular clusters s in clusters. I also found that although total number of globular clusters s within the central 0.05 Megaparsecs (N_GC,0.05) and 0.2 Megaparsecs (N_GC,0.2) are diverse in different clusters, they can depend weakly on M_CL in such a way that both N_GC,0.05 and N_GC,0.2 are likely to be larger for clusters with larger M_CL.

Furthermore it is found that total number of globular clusters per cluster masses (specific frequency of globular clusters for clusters of galaxies) are more likely to be larger in more massive clusters, mainly because a larger number of earlier virialized objects can be located in more massive clusters. The attached figure is the large-scale (i.e., Mpc-scale) distribution of globular clusters within halos (cyan) and those without (big magenta). I discussed these results in the context of the origin of the high S_n of cluster elliptical galaxies.

Fig. 1: The large-scale (i.e., Mpc-scale) distribution of GCs within halos (cyan) and those without (big magenta).