ESO 3060170: A Massive Fossil Galaxy Group with a Heated Gas Core?

Abstract

We present a detailed study of the ESO 3060170 galaxy group, combining Chandra, XMM-Newton, and optical observations. The system is found to be a fossil galaxy group. The group X-ray emission is composed of a central, dense, cool core (10 kpc in radius) and an isothermal medium beyond the central 10 kpc. The region between 10 and 50 kpc (the cooling radius) has the same temperature as the gas from 50 to 400 kpc, although the gas cooling time between 10 and 50 kpc (2-6 Gyr) is shorter than the Hubble time. Thus, the ESO 3060170 group does not have a group-sized cooling core. We suggest that the group cooling core may have been heated by a central active galactic nucleus (AGN) outburst in the past and that the small, dense, cool core is the truncated relic of a previous cooling core. The Chandra observations also reveal a variety of X-ray features in the central region, including a finger, an edgelike feature, and a small tail, all aligned along a north-south axis, as are the galaxy light and group galaxy distribution. The proposed AGN outburst may cause gas to slosh around the center and produce these asymmetric features. The observed flat temperature profile to rvir is not consistent with the predicted temperature profile in recent numerical simulations. We compare the entropy profile of the ESO 3060170 group with those of three other groups and find a flatter relation than that predicted by simulations involving only shock heating, S ∝ r~0.85. This is direct evidence of the importance of nongravitational processes in group centers. We derive the mass profiles within rvir and find that the ESO 3060170 group is the most massive fossil group known [ × 1014 M☉]. The M/L ratio of the system, ~150 at 0.3rvir, is normal.