PRE-PROCESSING OF GALAXIES IN THE FILAMENTS AROUND THE VIRGO CLUSTER

ABSTRACT Galaxies can be "pre-processed" in the low-density outskirts by ambient medium in the filaments or tidal interactions with other galaxies while falling into the cluster. In order to probe how early on and by which mechanisms galaxies can be affected before they enter high-density cluster environments, we are carrying out an atomic hydrogen (H i) imaging study of a sample of galaxies selected from three filamentary structures around the Virgo cluster. Our sample consists of 14 late-type galaxies, which are potentially interacting with their surroundings. The H i observations have been done using the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, and the Jansky Very Large Array with column density sensitivity of ≈ 3-5 × 10 19 cm −2 in 3σ per channel, which is low enough to detect faint H i features in the outer disks of galaxies. In this work, we present the H i data of two galaxies that were observed with GMRT. We examine the H i morphology and kinematics to find the evidence for gas-gas and/or tidal interactions, and discuss which mechanism(s) could be responsible for pre-processing in these cases