Some Constraints on the Origin of the Iron Enriched Intracluster Medium

Details Some Constraints on the Origin of the Iron Enriched Intracluster Medium Some Constraints on the Origin of the Iron Enriched Intracluster Medium

Feb 1992

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1992a%26a...254...49a&link_type=abstract

Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol.254, NO. FEB(I), P. 49, 1992

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

243

Scientific paper

We study the correlations between gas mass, iron mass and optical luminosity in clusters of galaxies. The gas mass in the intracluster medium (ICM) is highly correlated with the luminosity from ellipticals and lenticulars. The iron mass is directly proportional to it. No correlation is observed with the luminosity from spirals. Therefore we conclude that only ellipticals and lenticulars have participated in the enrichment of the ICM. Using typical mass to light ratio, we show that the gas mass is equal to 2-5 times the stellar mass present in these galaxies and we confirm that the gas mass over stellar mass ratio increases with the cluster richness. This probably means that most of the ICM is primordial in origin and that the galaxy formation (at least for ellipticals) has been less efficient in more massive clusters. The iron mass over stellar mass ratio reaches ~2 10^-3^. We emphasize that this ratio is the physical meaningful quantity for the study of the ICM enrichment. It is indeed linked to a fundamental quantity in chemical evolution models, namely the iron mass that a given population of stars can produce: the iron yield. In clusters this ratio is more than an order of magnitude greater than in our galaxy. This constraint challenges any chemical evolution model. Whatever the model, we show that it is impossible to produce such a quantity of iron by stellar mass with a standard iron yield. We discuss other possibilities and suggest that a bimodal star formation in the cluster galaxies could better reproduce the observational constraints.

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