We investigate three separate topics associated with the formation and evolution of the stellar mass component in galaxy clusters. The work presented herein is based primarily on optical imaging and spectra taken with, respectively, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and Gemini North/South. We confront the result from the optical data analysis with the results from the analysis of high-resolution X-ray data taken with the Chandra and XMM-Newton space observatories. Confirming earlier results, we find that 22% of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) show central inversions in their optical color profiles (blue-cores), indicative of recent star formation or AGN activity. Based on the extended sizes of the blue-core regions we favour recent star formation. Comparison with the host cluster central entropies (and other X-ray properties) demonstrates that the source of cold gas required to fuel the recent activity in BCG cores is direct condensation from the rapidly cooling intra-cluster medium. We measure the giant-to-dwarf ratio (GDR) of red sequence galaxies in a sample of 97 clusters to constrain its evolution over the redshift range 0.05 < z < 0.55. We find that the GDR is evolving and can be parameterized by GDR=(0.88 +/- 0.15)z+(0.44 +/- 0.03). We find that the intrinsic scatter in this relation is consistent with zero, after accounting for measurement error, Poisson noise and contributions from large-scale structure. After correcting for cluster mass effects we investigate the evolution of the individual dwarf and giant populations in order to probe the source of the observed GDR evolution. Beyond z=0.25 the GDR evolution is driven by an increase in the number of dwarfs (consistent with interpretations from the literature), however, below z=0.2 the GDR evolution is caused by a significant reduction in the number of giants. We interpret this a evidence for a significant number of major mergers in the giant population at late times. This is supported by the relatively short dynamical friction timescales for these galaxies. We use velocity-broadened stellar template models to fit the optical spectra of 19 BCGs in order to measure their the line-of-sight component of their central velocity dispersions (sigma). The sigma values are combined with previous measurements of effective radii re and effective surface brightness <I>e to investigate the properties of the BCG fundamental plane. We measure a BCG fundamental plane parameterized by log( re )= alpha log( sigma ) + beta log( <I>e ) + gamma, with best fit parameters alpha = 1.24 +/- 0.08, beta = -0.80 +/- 0.1 and gamma = (0.3 +/- 2.0)x10-4. We constrain the intrinsic scatter in this relation to be deltaint = 0.066 +/- 0.010 in re, consistent with previous measures of the scatter in the fundamental plane for regular cluster ellipticals. Comparing the slope parameters (alpha, beta) of the BCG FP to those from previous studies of the FP for regular cluster ellipticals, we find that there is no conclusive evidence for curvature in the unified FP. We use the sigma measurements to estimate the BCG dynamical masses Mdyn. Comparing these estimates with mass proxies for the clusters (Tx, ng) we find that BCG mass is independent of cluster mass with Mdyn = (2.9 +/- 1.8)x1012 solar masses. / Graduate / 0606 / 0605 / bildfell@uvic.ca

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