Metal jumps across sloshing cold fronts: the case of A496

TL;DR

This study investigates metal distribution across cold fronts in galaxy cluster A496, revealing iron discontinuities and metal excesses that support the sloshing scenario of cold-front formation.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of metal abundance discontinuities across cold fronts in A496, linking metal distribution to sloshing mechanisms in galaxy clusters.

Findings

Fe discontinuities across cold fronts at ~60 and ~160 kpc

Metal excess observed in the South direction

Supports the sloshing scenario for cold-front formation

Abstract

Cold-fronts in cool-core clusters are thought to be induced by minor mergers and to develop through a sloshing mechanism. While temperature and surface-brightness jumps have been detected and measured in many systems, a detailed characterization of the metal abundance across the discontinuity is only available for a handful of objects. Within the sloshing scenario, we expect the central cool and metal rich gas to be displaced outwards into lower abundance regions, thus generating a metal discontinuity across the front. We analyzed a long (120 ksec) XMM-Newton observation of A496 to study the metal distribution and its correlation with the cold-fronts. We find Fe discontinuities across the two main cold-fronts located ~60 kpc NNW and ~160 kpc South of the peak and a metal excess in the South direction.