CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Using a cosmological N-body numerical simulation of the formation of a galaxycluster- sized halo, we analyze the temporal evolution of its globular clusterpopulation. We follow the dynamical evolution of 38 galactic dark matter halosorbiting in a galaxy cluster that at redshift z=0 has a virial mass of 1.71 *10 ^14 Msol h^-1. In order to mimic both "blue" and "red" populations ofglobular clusters, for each galactic halo we select two different sets ofparticles at high redshift (z ~ 1), constrained by the condition that, atredshift z=0, their average radial density profiles are similar to the observedprofiles. As expected, the general galaxy cluster tidal field removes asignificant fraction of the globular cluster populations to feed theintracluster population. On average, halos lost approximately 16% and 29% oftheir initial red and blue globular cluster populations, respectively. Ourresults suggest that these fractions strongly depend on the orbital trajectoryof the galactic halo, specifically on the number of orbits and on the minimumpericentric distance to the galaxy cluster center that the halo has had. At agiven time, these fractions also depend on the current clustercentric distance,just as observations show that the specific frequencyof globular clusters S_Ndepends on their clustercentric distance.