2022ApJ...937...18B

We present a study of the orbits, environments, and morphologies of 13 ram-pressure stripped galaxies in the massive, intermediate redshift (z ∼ 0.3-0.4) galaxy clusters A2744 and A370, using MUSE integral-field spectroscopy and Hubble Space Telescope imaging from the Frontier Fields Program. We compare different measures of the locations and morphologies of the stripped sample with a sample of six post-starburst galaxies identified within the same clusters, as well as the general cluster population. We calculate the phase-space locations of all cluster galaxies and carry out a substructure analysis, finding that the ram-pressure stripped galaxies in A370 are not associated with any substructures, but are likely isolated infalling galaxies. In contrast, the ram-pressure stripped galaxies in A2744 are strictly located within a high-velocity substructure, moving through a region of dense X-ray emitting gas. We conclude that their ram-pressure interactions are likely to be the direct result of the merger between two components of the cluster. Finally, we study the morphologies of the stripped and post-starburst galaxies, using numerical measures to quantify the level of visual disturbances. We explore any morphological deviations of these galaxies from the cluster population, particularly the weaker cases that have been confirmed via the presence of ionized gas tails to be undergoing ram-pressure stripping, but are not strongly visually disturbed in the broadband data. We find that the stripped sample galaxies are generally divergent from the general cluster sample, with post-starburst galaxies being intermediary in morphology between stripped galaxies and red passive cluster members.