Observations of metals in the intra-cluster medium

Abstract

Because of their deep gravitational potential wells, clusters of galaxies retain all the metals produced by the stellar populations of the member galaxies. Most of these metals reside in the hot plasma which dominates the baryon content of clusters. This makes them excellent laboratories for the study of the nucleosynthesis and chemical enrichment history of the Universe. Here we review the history, current possibilities and limitations of the abundance studies, and the present observational status of X-ray measurements of the chemical composition of the intra-cluster medium. We summarise the latest progress in using the abundance patterns in clusters to put constraints on theoretical models of supernovae and we show how cluster abundances provide new insights into the star-formation history of the Universe.

28 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews, special issue "Clusters of galaxies: beyond the thermal view", Editor J.S. Kaastra, Chapter 16; work done by an international team at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI), Bern, organised by J.S. Kaastra, A.M. Bykov, S. Schindler & J.A.M. Bleeker

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• Images, structural properties and metal abundances of galaxy clusters observed with Chandra ACIS-I at 0.1<z<1.3
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• Metal enrichment processes
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• Metal enrichment of the intra-cluster medium over a Hubble time for merging and relaxed galaxy clusters
• The abundance pattern of O, Mg, Si and Fe in the intracluster medium of the Centaurus cluster observed with XMM-Newton
• Future instrumentation for the study of the Warm-Hot Intergalactic Medium
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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Chemical enrichment in the cluster of galaxies Hydra A
• Non-thermal processes in cosmological simulations
• Metal enrichment processes
• The chemical enrichment of the ICM from hydrodynamical simulations
• Evolution of the metal content of the intra-cluster medium with hydrodynamical simulations
• Clusters of galaxies: setting the stage