The Unusually High Halo Concentration of the Fossil Group NGC 6482: Evidence for Weak Adiabatic Contraction

TL;DR

This study measures the dark matter halo concentration of the fossil galaxy NGC 6482, finding it unusually high and exploring how adiabatic contraction models affect the interpretation of its mass distribution.

Contribution

It provides new X-ray measurements extending to large radii and evaluates the impact of different adiabatic contraction models on halo concentration estimates.

Findings

NGC 6482 has an exceptionally high halo concentration c_200=32.2.

We find a weaker adiabatic contraction model fits the data well.

The BCG stellar mass favors a Chabrier or Kroupa IMF over Salpeter.

Abstract

We revisit the massive isolated elliptical galaxy / fossil group NGC 6482 for which previous X-ray studies of a modest Chandra observation obtained a very uncertain, but also possibly very high, halo concentration. We present new measurements of the hot gas surface brightness, temperature, and iron abundance using the modest Chandra observation and a previously unpublished Suzaku observation, the latter of which allows measurements of the gas properties to be extended out to ~r_2500. By constructing hydrostatic equilibrium models of the gas with separate components for the gas, BCG stellar mass, and the dark matter (DM), we measure c_200 = 32.2 +/- 7.1 and M_200 = (4.5 +/- 0.6 x 10^12 M_sun using an NFW DM profile. For a halo of this mass, c_200 exceeds the mean value (7.1) expected for relaxed LCDM halos by $3.5 \sigma$ in terms of the observational error, and by $6 \sigma$ considering the intrinsic scatter in the LCDM c-M relation, which situates NGC 6482 as the most extreme outlier known for a fossil system. We explored several variants of adiabatic contraction (AC) models and, while the AC models provide fits of the same quality as the un-contracted models, they do have the following advantages: (1) smaller c_200 that is less of an outlier in the LCDM c-M relation, and (2) baryon fractions that agree better with the mean cosmic value. While the standard AC prescriptions yield a BCG stellar mass that is uncomfortably small compared to results from stellar population synthesis (SPS) models, a weaker AC variant that artificially shuts off cooling and star formation at z=2 yields the same stellar mass as the un-contracted models. For these reasons, we believe our X-ray analysis prefers this weaker AC variant applied to either an NFW or Einasto DM halo. Finally, the BCG stellar mass strongly favors SPS models with a Chabrier or Kroupa IMF over a Salpeter IMF. (Abridged)