Quantified diffuse light in compact groups of galaxies
  The vast majority of stars in galaxy groups are contained within their
constituent galaxies. Some small fraction of stars is expected, however, to
follow the global dark matter potential of the group. In compact groups,
interactions between the galaxies should be frequent. This leads to a more
intensive material stripping from the group members, which finally forms an
intra-group light component (IGL). Therefore, the distribution of the IGL
should be related to the distribution of the total mass in the compact group
and its dynamical status. In this study we consider the distribution and
fraction of the IGL in a sample of 36 Hickson compact groups (HCGs). We use
deep observations of these compact groups (down to surface brightness $\sim 28$
mag\,arcsec$^{-2}$ in the $r$ band) obtained with the WISE $28$-inch telescope.
For five HCGs with a bright symmetric IGL component, we carry out
multicomponent photometric decomposition to simultaneously fit the galaxy
profiles and the IGL. For the remaining groups, we only fit the profiles of
their constituent galaxies. We find that the mean surface brightness of the IGL
correlates with the mean morphology of the group: it becomes brighter in the
groups with a larger fraction of early-type galaxies. On the other hand, the
IGL brightness depends on the total luminosity of the group. The IGL profile
tends to have a S\'ersic index $n\sim0.5-1$, which is generally consistent with
the mass density profile of dark matter haloes in compact groups obtained from
cosmological simulations.
