Chemical enrichment of ICM within the Centaurus cluster I: radial profiles

TL;DR

This study analyzes XMM-Newton observations of the Centaurus cluster to understand the radial distribution of metals in the hot intracluster medium, revealing early enrichment and temperature discontinuities.

Contribution

It provides detailed radial profiles of multiple elements and models the enrichment sources, highlighting early metal enrichment in the cluster.

Findings

Negative abundance gradients within 90 kpc

Temperature distribution fits a log-normal model with discontinuities

Uniform SNIa contribution supports early enrichment

Abstract

We examine deep {\it XMM-Newton} EPIC-pn observations of the Centaurus cluster to study the hot intracluster medium (ICM) and radial metal distributions within such an environment. We found that the best-fit spectral model corresponds to a log-normal temperature distribution, with discontinuities around $\sim10$~kpc, $\sim50$~kpc, and $\sim100$~kpc, also observed in the abundances distributions. We measured the radial profiles of O, Si, S, Ar, Ca, and Fe. These profiles reveal prominent negative gradients for distances $<90$~kpc, which then transition to flatter profiles. We modeled X/Fe ratio profiles with a linear combination of SNIcc and SNIa models. The best-fit model suggests a uniform SNIa percentage contribution to the total cluster enrichment, thus supporting an early enrichment of the ICM, with most of the metals present being produced before clustering.