Mining the gap: evolution of the magnitude gap in X-ray galaxy groups
  from the 3 square degree XMM coverage of CFHTLS
  We present a catalog of 129 X-ray galaxy groups, covering a redshift range
0.04<z<1.23, selected in the ~3 square degree part of the CFHTLS W1 field
overlapping XMM observations performed under the XMM-LSS project. We carry out
a statistical study of the redshift evolution out to redshift one of the
magnitude gap between the first and the second brightest cluster galaxies of a
well defined mass-selected group sample. We find that the slope of the relation
between the fraction of groups and the magnitude gap steepens with redshift,
indicating a larger fraction of fossil groups at lower redshifts. We find that
22.2$\pm$6% of our groups at z$\leq$0.6 are fossil groups. We compare our
results with the predictions of three semi-analytic models based on the
Millennium simulation. The intercept of the relation between the magnitude of
the brightest galaxy and the value of magnitude gap becomes brighter with
increasing redshift. This trend is steeper than the model predictions which we
attribute to the younger stellar age of the observed brightest cluster
galaxies. This trend argues in favor of stronger evolution of the feedback from
active galactic nuclei at z<1 compared to the models. The slope of the relation
between the magnitude of the brightest cluster galaxy and the value of the gap
does not evolve with redshift and is well reproduced by the models, indicating
that the tidal galaxy stripping, put forward as an explanation of the
occurrence of the magnitude gap, is both a dominant mechanism and is
sufficiently well modeled.
