Properties of the Intracluster Medium Assuming an Einasto Dark Matter Profile

Abstract

I investigate an analytical model of galaxy clusters based on the assumptions that the intracluster medium plasma is polytropic and is in hydrostatic equilibrium. The Einasto profile is adopted as a model for the spatial-density distribution of dark matter halos. This model has sufficient degrees of freedom to simultaneously fit X-ray surface brightness and temperature profiles, with five parameters to describe the global cluster properties and three additional parameters to describe the cluster’s cool-core feature. The model is tested with Chandra X-ray data for seven galaxy clusters, including three polytropic clusters and four cool-core clusters. It is found that the model accurately reproduces the X-ray data over most of the radial range. For all galaxy clusters, the data allows one to show that the model is essentially as good as that of Vikhlinin et al. and Bulbul et al., as inferred by the reduced χ 2.