Metal Enrichment of the Intra-Cluster Medium: Ram-Pressure Stripping of Cluster Galaxies

Because of their deep gravitational potential wells, clusters of galaxies retain all the metals produced by the stellar populations of the member galaxies. Most of these metals reside in the hot plasma which dominates the baryon content of clusters. This makes them excellent laboratories for the study of the nucleosynthesis and chemical enrichment history of the Universe. Here we review the history, current possibilities and limitations of the abundance studies, and the prese...

In this paper, we focus on ram-pressure stripping and evaporation of disk galaxies in and around a cluster. We show that the evolution of the disk surface density affects the efficiency of ram-pressure stripping of galaxies at z>~1. We also consider the saturation of thermal conduction in detail and show that it cannot be ignored at larger radii of a cluster, which makes the time-scale of the evaporation larger. Both the ram-pressure stripping and evaporation could affect the...

The study of the metal enrichment of the intra-cluster and inter-galactic media (ICM and IGM) represents a direct means to reconstruct the past history of star formation, the role of feedback processes and the gas-dynamical processes which determine the evolution of the cosmic baryons. In this paper we review the approaches that have been followed so far to model the enrichment of the ICM in a cosmological context. While our presentation will be focused on the role played by ...

For several decades now, open clusters have been used to study the structure and chemical evolution of the disk of our Galaxy. Due to the fact that their ages and metallicities can be determined with relatively good precision, and since they can be observed even at great distances, they are excellent tracers of the variations in the abundance of heavy chemical elements with age and position in the Galactic disk. In the present work we analyze the star formation history and th...

Aims. We investigate whether X-ray observations map heavy elements in the Intra-Cluster Medium (ICM) well and whether the X-ray observations yield good estimates for the metal mass, with respect to predictions on transport mech- anisms of heavy elements from galaxies into the ICM. We further test the accuracy of simulated metallicity maps. Methods. We extract synthetic X-ray spectra from N-body/hydrodynamic simulations including metal enrichment pro- cesses, which we then ana...

Cluster spiral galaxies suffer catastrophic losses of the cool, neutral gas component of their interstellar medium due to ram pressure stripping, contributing to the observed quenching of star formation in the disk compared to galaxies in lower density environments. However, the short term effects of ram pressure on the star formation rate and AGN activity of galaxies undergoing stripping remain unclear. Numerical studies have recently demonstrated cosmic rays can dramaticall...

Recent observations of galaxy clusters have shown that environmental effects apparently associated with the cluster begin to lower the star formation rates of galaxies at distances as great as three times the cluster virial radius. These observations may indicate preprocessing of cluster galaxies in groups or in the cluster core for galaxies on highly elliptical orbits, but may also imply that the environmental effects due to the cluster are directly affecting galaxies on the...

Groups and clusters contain a large fraction of hot gas which emits X-ray radiation. This gas yields information on the dynamical state and on the total mass of these systems. X-ray spectra show that heavy elements are present in the gas. As these metals must have been produced in the cluster/group galaxies and later transported into the gas, the metallicity is a good tracer for the transport processes. Several possible processes, that transport gas from the small potential w...

Elliptical galaxies contain X-ray emitting gas that is subject to continuous ram pressure stripping over timescales comparable to cluster ages. The gas in these galaxies is not in perfect hydrostatic equilibrium. Supernova feedback, stellar winds, or active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback can significantly perturb the interstellar medium (ISM). Using hydrodynamical simulations, we investigate the effect of subsonic turbulence in the hot ISM on the ram pressure stripping proces...

By creating and analyzing the two dimensional gas temperature and abundance maps of the RGH 80 compact galaxy group with the high-quality Chandra data, we detect a high-abundance ($\simeq 0.7$ $Z_\odot$) arc, where the metal abundance is significantly higher than the surrounding regions by $\simeq 0.3$ Z_\odot$. This structure shows tight spatial correlations with the member galaxy PGC 046529, as well as with the arm-like feature identified on the X-ray image in the previous ...