Description:
We present the results of a set of numerical simulations evaluating the effect of cluster galaxies on arc statistics. We perform a first set of gravitational lensing simulations using three independent projections for each of nine different galaxy clusters obtained from N-body simulations. The simulated clusters consist of dark matter only. We add a population of galaxies to each cluster, mimicking the observed luminosity function and the spatial galaxy distribution, and repeat the lensing simulations including the effects of cluster galaxies, which themselves act as individual lenses. Each galaxy is represented by a spherical Navarro, Frenk & White (1997) density profile. We consider the statistical distributions of the properties of the gravitational arcs produced by our clusters with and without galaxies. We find that the cluster galaxies do not introduce perturbations strong enough to significantly change the number of arcs and the distributions of lengths, widths, curvature radii and length-to-width ratios of long arcs. We find some changes to the distribution of short-arc properties in presence of cluster galaxies. The differences appear in the distribution of curvature radii for arc lengths smaller than 12'', while the distributions of lengths, widths and length-to-width ratios are significantly changed only for arcs shorter than 4''.