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J. R. Peterson, S. M. Kahn, F. B. S. Paerels (Columbia University), J. S. Kaastra, T. Tamura (SRON), J. G. Jernigan (Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory)
We present XMM-Newton observations of 14 X-ray clusters and groups of galaxies. We emphasize several new developments in the study of the soft X-ray spectrum of cooling-flows in relation to the soft X-ray cooling-flow problem. Although there is some uncertainty in the expected mass deposition rate for any individual cluster, we show that high resolution RGS spectra robustly demonstrate that the expected line emission from the isobaric cooling-flow model is absent below 1/3 of the background temperature rather than below a fixed temperature in all clusters. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the best-resolved cluster spectra are inconsistent with the predicted shape of the differential luminosity distribution and the measured distribution is tilted to higher temperatures. Combining this result with EPIC spatially-resolved spectro-photometry, we show that the steep differential luminosity distribution is partly a result of the global temperature gradients, but also may be partly due to a intrinsically steep and locally non-isothermal temperature distribution. These observations create several fine-tuning challenges for current theoretical explanations for the soft X-ray cooling-flow problem. Finally, we present a novel Monte Carlo analysis method which results in a temperature deconvolution of a Chandra HETG observation of the galaxy cluster, RX J1347.5-1145.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jrpeters@astro.columbia.edu
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,
35#2
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.