Properties of the Intracluster Medium Assuming an Einasto Dark Matter Profile

TL;DR

This paper presents an analytical model of galaxy clusters using an Einasto dark matter profile, fitting X-ray data to understand intracluster medium properties with high accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a flexible model combining polytropic plasma and Einasto dark matter profile, fitting X-ray observations of galaxy clusters effectively.

Findings

Model accurately reproduces X-ray profiles across clusters.

Comparable performance to existing models like Vikhlinin et al.

Effective in describing both polytropic and cool-core clusters.

Abstract

I investigate an analytical model of galaxy clusters based on the assumption that the intracluster medium plasma is polytropic and is in hydrostatic equilibrium. The Einasto profile is adopted as a model for the spatial-density distribution of dark matter halos. This model has sufficient degrees of freedom to simultaneously fit X-ray surface brightness and temperature profiles, with five parameters to describe the global cluster properties and three additional parameters to describe the cluster's cool-core feature. The model is tested with Chandra X-ray data for seven galaxy clusters, including three polytropic clusters and four cool-core clusters. It is found that the model accurately reproduces the X-ray data over most of the radial range. For all galaxy clusters, the data allows to show that the model is essentially as good as that of Vikhlinin et al and Bulbul et al, as inferred by the reduced $\chi^2$.