Metal enrichment of the intra-cluster medium by thermally and cosmic-ray driven galactic winds

TL;DR

This study models the impact of thermal and cosmic-ray driven galactic winds on the metal enrichment of the intra-cluster medium, revealing their insufficiency alone to match observed metallicities and highlighting the importance of combined processes.

Contribution

It introduces a new analytical approximation for galactic wind-driven mass outflow integrated into cosmological simulations, improving understanding of ICM metal enrichment mechanisms.

Findings

Galactic winds alone cannot explain observed ICM metallicities.

Combined galactic winds and ram-pressure stripping produce more realistic metallicity profiles.

Simulated metallicity evolution aligns reasonably with recent observations.

Abstract

We investigate the efficiency and time-dependence of thermally and cosmic ray driven galactic winds for the metal enrichment of the intra-cluster medium (ICM) using a new analytical approximation for the mass outflow. The spatial distribution of the metals are studied using radial metallicity profiles and 2D metallicity maps of the model clusters as they would be observed by X-ray telescopes like XMM-Newton. Analytical approximations for the mass loss by galactic winds driven by thermal and cosmic ray pressure are derived from the Bernoulli equation and implemented in combined N-body/hydrodynamic cosmological simulations with a semi-analytical galaxy formation model. Observable quantities like the mean metallicity, metallicity profiles, and 2D metal maps of the model clusters are derived from the simulations. We find that galactic winds alone cannot account for the observed metallicity of the ICM. At redshift $z=0$ the model clusters have metallicities originating from galactic winds which are almost a factor of 10 lower than the observed values. For massive, relaxed clusters we find, as in previous studies, a central drop in the metallicity due to a suppression of the galactic winds by the pressure of the ambient ICM. Combining ram-pressure stripping and galactic winds we find radial metallicity profiles of the model clusters which agree qualitatively with observed profiles. Only in the inner parts of massive clusters the observed profiles are steeper than in the simulations. Also the combination of galactic winds and ram-pressure stripping yields too low values for the ICM metallicities. The slope of the redshift evolution of the mean metallicity in the simulations agrees reasonably well with recent observations.