Origin of central abundances in the hot intra-cluster medium - I. individual and average abundance ratios from XMM-Newton EPIC

Mernier, F. and Plaa, J. de and Pinto, C. and Kaastra, J. S. and Kosec, P. and Zhang, Y. Y. and Mao, J. and Werner, N. (2016) Origin of central abundances in the hot intra-cluster medium - I. individual and average abundance ratios from XMM-Newton EPIC. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 592. A157. ISSN 0004-6361 (https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201527824)

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Abstract

The hot intra-cluster medium (ICM) is rich in metals, which are synthesized by supernovae (SNe) explosions and accumulate over time into the deep gravitational potential well of clusters of galaxies. Since most of the elements visible in X-rays are formed by type Ia (SNIa) and/or core-collapse (SNcc) supernovae, measuring their abundances gives us direct information on the nucleosynthesis products of billions of SNe since the epoch of the star formation peak (z ~ 2-3). In this study, we use the EPIC and RGS instruments onboard XMM-Newton to measure the abundances of 9 elements (O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, Ar, Ca, Fe and Ni) from a sample of 44 nearby cool-core galaxy clusters, groups, and elliptical galaxies. We find that the Fe abundance shows a large scatter (~20-40%) over the sample, within 0.2$r_{500}$ and, especially, 0.05$r_{500}$. Unlike the absolute Fe abundance, the abundance ratios (X/Fe) are quite uniform over the considered temperature range (~0.6-8 keV), and with a limited scatter. In addition to a unprecedented treatment of systematic uncertainties, we provide the most accurate abundance ratios measured so far in the ICM, including Cr/Fe and Mn/Fe that we firmly detect (>4{\sigma} with MOS and pn independently). We find that Cr/Fe, Mn/Fe and Ni/Fe, differ significantly from the proto-solar values. However, the large uncertainties in the proto-solar abundances prevent us from making a robust comparison between the local and the intra-cluster chemical enrichments. We also note that, interestingly, and despite the large net exposure time (~4.5 Ms) of our dataset, no line emission feature is seen around ~3.5 keV.

  • Item type:Article
    ID code:70862
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    24 August 2016
    Published
    3 June 2016
    Accepted
    Subjects:Science > Astronomy
    Department:Faculty of Science > Physics
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:12 Dec 2019 16:42
    Last modified:09 Apr 2024 01:07
    Related URLs:
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/70862
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