2004/02/10 by H. Boehringer, H. Böhringer, K. Matsushita +4 · 8 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20040047
published as Astron.Astrophys. 416 (2004) L21 · 5 pages, 4 figures, A&A in press. Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, in press
arxiv created 2004/02/10 · openalex publication_date 2004/03/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Recent XMM-Newton observations of clusters of galaxies have provided detailed information on the distribution of heavy elements in the central regions of clusters with cooling cores providing strong evidence that most of these metals come from recent SN type Ia. In this paper we compile information on the cumulative mass profiles of iron, the most important metallicity tracer. We find that long enrichment times (≥5 Gyr) are necessary to produce the central abundance peaks. Classical cooling flows, a strongly convective intracluster medium, and a complete metal mixing by cluster mergers would destroy the observed abundance peaks too rapidly. Thus the observations set strong constraints on cluster evolution models requiring that the cooling cores in clusters are preserved over very long times. We further conclude from the observations that the innermost part of the intracluster medium is most probably dominated by gas originating predominantly from stellar mass loss of the cD galaxy.