The physics inside the scaling relations for X-ray galaxy clusters: gas clumpiness, gas mass fraction and slope of the pressure profile

TL;DR

This paper refines galaxy cluster scaling relations by linking observable properties to physical quantities like gas clumpiness, gas mass fraction, and pressure profile slope, improving mass estimation accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a coherent framework fixing normalization and slopes to self-similar predictions, and identifies three physical quantities explaining deviations in scaling relations.

Findings

Derived relations for gas clumpiness and gas mass fraction as functions of cluster mass.

Measured the pressure profile slope and its dependence on cluster mass.

Established an internally consistent set of scaling relations with minimal residuals.

Abstract

In galaxy clusters, the relations between observables in X-ray and millimeter wave bands and the total mass have normalizations, slopes and redshift evolutions that are simple to estimate in a self-similar scenario. We study these scaling relations and show that they can be efficiently expressed, in a more coherent picture, by fixing the normalizations and slopes to the self-similar predictions, and advocating, as responsible of the observed deviations, only three physical mass-dependent quantities: the gas clumpiness $C$, the gas mass fraction $f_g$ and the logarithmic slope of the thermal pressure profile $\beta_P$. We use samples of the observed gas masses, temperature, luminosities, and Compton parameters in local clusters to constrain normalization and mass dependence of these 3 physical quantities, and measure: $C^{0.5} f_g = 0.110 (\pm 0.002 \pm 0.002) \left( E_z M / 5 \times 10^{14} M_{\odot} \right)^{0.198 (\pm 0.025 \pm 0.04)}$ and $\beta_P = -d \ln P/d \ln r = 3.14 (\pm 0.04 \pm 0.02) \left( E_z M / 5 \times 10^{14} M_{\odot} \right)^{0.071 (\pm 0.012 \pm 0.004)}$, where both a statistical and systematic error (the latter mainly due to the cross-calibration uncertainties affecting the \cxo\ and \xmm\ results used in the present analysis) are quoted. The degeneracy between $C$ and $f_g$ is broken by using the estimates of the Compton parameters. Together with the self-similar predictions, these estimates on $C$, $f_g$ and $\beta_P$ define an inter-correlated internally-consistent set of scaling relations that reproduces the mass estimates with the lowest residuals.