Deep CCD surface photometry of galaxy clusters. I. Methods and initial studies of intracluster starlight

We report the initial results of a deep imaging survey of galaxy clusters. The primary goals of this survey are to quantify the amount of intracluster light as a function of cluster properties and to quantify the frequency of tidal debris. We outline the techniques needed to perform such a survey, and we report findings for the first two galaxy clusters in the survey: A1413 and MKW 7. These clusters vary greatly in richness and structure. We show that our surface photometry reliably reaches to a surface brightness of mu(nu) = 26.5 mag arcsec(-2). We find that both clusters show clear excesses over a best-fitting r(1/4) profile: this was expected for A1413 but not for MKW7. Both clusters also show evidence of tidal debris in the form of plumes and arclike structures, but no long tidal arcs were detected. We also find that the central cD galaxy in A1413 is flattened at large radii, with an ellipticity of approximate to0.8, the largest measured ellipticity of any cD galaxy to date.