The Cold Absorber in Clusters of Galaxies: New ASCA Observations and Models

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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One of the most persistent problems concerning cooling flows is the ultimate repository of the cooling gas. Recently, White et al. (1991) have found evidence for excess soft X-ray absorption in the spectra of a sample of cluster cooling flows observed with the Einstein SSS. The typical excess columns of cold material (in excess to the galactic column N_H) are Delta N_H ~ 10(21) cm(-2) . When these columns are accumulated over the area of the cooling flow, they imply the presence of very large quantities of cold absorbing material (Mcold ~ 10(11) --10(12) Msun). This soft X-ray absorption could represent the first direct evidence for the large amounts of cooled material which current cooling flow models predict. We will present results from the analysis of a 45 ksec ASCA observation of the bright, relatively nearby (z=0.0767) cooling flow cluster A2029. Our preliminary analysis confirms both the strong cooling flow (dot M ~ 370 Msun yr(-1) ) as well as the presence of excess absorption at a level ~ 5 times the standard galactic column. The spectrum is reasonably well fit by a partial covering fraction absorption model with a covering fraction of ~ 0.7. Models assuming simple galactic absorption are NOT consistent with the data. There is also evidence for an absorption feature at ~ 0.49 keV, consistent with the redshifted O K-edge one would expect from intrinsic absorption due to cold material. In addition, we have constructed a grid of detailed models for the expected X-ray spectra and surface brightnesses of cluster cooling flows including the opacity due to accumulated cold material. These models indicate that derived values for the total cooling rate dot M may be underestimated by ~ 2 assuming 100% of the cooling material goes into a cold, X-ray absorbing form. We find that models with higher mass deposition in the central regions can produce profiles comparable to the dot M(

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