On the influence of high energy electron populations on metal abundance estimates in galaxy groups and clusters

TL;DR

This paper investigates how high energy electron populations, modeled with modified Maxwellian distributions, affect metal abundance estimates in galaxy groups, clusters, and the solar corona, revealing that such populations can significantly alter abundance measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized method to calculate line emissivities for modified Maxwellian electron distributions and demonstrates their impact on metal abundance estimates in astrophysical plasmas.

Findings

Argon abundance decreases in HCG 62 with high energy electrons.

Iron abundance decreases in Centaurus cluster due to high energy electrons.

Oxygen abundance decreases in the solar corona when considering high energy electrons.

Abstract

Spectral line emissivities have usually been calculated for a Maxwellian electron distribution. But many theoretical works on galaxy groups and clusters and on the solar corona suggest to consider modified Maxwellian electron distribution functions to fit observed X-ray spectra. Here we examine the influence of high energy electron populations on measurements of metal abundances. A generalized approach which was proposed in the paper by Prokhorov et al. (2009) is used to calculate the line emissivities for a modified Maxwellian distribution. We study metal abundances in galaxy groups and clusters where hard X-ray excess emission was observed. We found that for modified Maxwellian distributions the argon abundance decreases for the HCG 62 group, the iron abundance decreases for the Centaurus cluster and the oxygen abundance decreases for the solar corona with respect to the case of a Maxwellian distribution. Therefore, metal abundance measurements are a promising tool to test the presence of high energy electron populations.