Scientific Seminars

Metal Enrichment Of The Intra-cluster Medium

W. Kapferer
University of Innsbruck

2009-12-01    14:00    IASF - Sala riunioni (IV piano)

The plasma between the galaxies in a galaxy cluster - the intra-cluster medium (ICM) - does not only contain primordial elements, but also heavy elements like Fe, Si, S or O. From X-ray observations the overall metal abundance is known to be 1/3 - 1/2 solar. As heavy elements are only produced in stars, the processed material must have been transported from cluster galaxies into the ICM. Possible transport processes are ram-pressure stripping, galactic winds, galaxy-galaxy interactions or outflows from active galactic nuclei. In this talk results from combined N-body/hydrodynamic simulations together with a galaxy formation model and their comparison with observations will be presented.