Abstract
Abstract Past ASCA and ROSAT observations could not support the general view that elliptical galaxies are sources of metals in the intracluster medium, since observational results have shown that X-ray faint elliptical galaxies exhibit too low metal abundances of hot interstellar medium (ISM). We investigated the radial profiles of the temperature and abundance of 9 X-ray faint elliptical galaxies using the Chandra data. It is found that the heavy element abundance is as high as $\sim$0.7 solar at the central region. Moreover, toward the periphery of galaxies, the metallicity sharply declines. Therefore, the existence of low-metallicity intergalactic gas around X-ray faint elliptical galaxies is indicated. We also investigated the abundance ratios among several elements of 5 X-ray faint elliptical galaxies using the XMM-Newton data, and obtained a hint that the O$/$Fe ratio of X-ray faint elliptical galaxies is smaller than that of X-ray bright elliptical galaxies. This result perhaps indicates that, in X-ray faint elliptical galaxies, the contribution of SNeIa is smaller than that in X-ray bright ones, and it is speculated that many of the metals in ISM of X-ray faint elliptical galaxies have escaped into the surrounding space.
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